1 





c^^y^ljL /ce>y.^^.oH^^ 



A COLLECTION 

OP 

HISTORICAL AND OTHER PAPERS 

BY 

REV. GRIKDALL REYNOLDS, D.D. 

TO WHICH AKE ADDED 

SEVEN OF HIS SERMONS. 



PubIi0l)£ti b2 tf)c iStiit0r. 
CONCOED, MASSACHUSETTS. 
''^T 1895. 






University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



.-'^ 



^N.^ 



EDITORIAL NOTE. 

TT was my Father's desire and intention, had 
the leisure ever come to him in his busy life, 
to collect in more permanent form his historical 
papers, some of which had already appeared as 
magazine articles. 

Wishing to carry out this plan of his, and en- 
couraged to do so by the interest expressed by 
many of his friends after his death, I have col- 
lected and had printed the following papers. 

Several of his sermons have been added, with 
the feeling that they might be valued by those 
who had listened to his preaching. 

Rev. Edward C. Guild has very kindly ren- 
dered valuable assistance in preparing these 
papers for the printer. 



ALICE REYNOLDS KEYES. 



Concord, Massachusetts, 
September 15, 1895. 



GEI]^n)ALL EEYKOLDS, 

Born December 22, 1822; Died September 30, 1894; 

Was descended from the family of the Puritan Archbishop of 
Canterbury, Grindal, whose name he bore. He was kin 
to those stalwart divines and first ministers of two of 
the oldest Churches of New England, — John Wilson, of 
Boston, and Thomas Weld, of lloxbury. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Portrait of Rev. Grindall Reynolds, D.D. . Frontispiece 



Editorial Note 

Introduction by Hon. George F. Hoar , 



Autobiographical Sketch of 

Rev. Grindall Reynolds, D.D. xiii 
Printed in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, September, 1894. 



American f^i&tot^. 

King Philip's War; avith Special Reference to the 

Attack on Brookfield in August, 1675 1 

Read before the American Antiquarian Society, October 21, 1887. 

Siege and Evacuation of Boston 23 

Printed in the Unitarian Review, March, 1876. 

From Ticonderoga to Saratoga 54 

Printed in the Unitarian Review, November, 1877. 

Three Episodes of the Northern Campaigns of the 
Revolution 80 

Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum, Janunrv 23, 1878. 



vi CONTENTS. 

ConcorD* 

PAOB 

The Planting of the Church in Concord .... 104 

Paper read iu the Meetiug-house of the First Parish in Concord, 
March 1, 1891. 

The Church in Concord: its Period of Personal and 
Theological Dissension 125 

Paper read in the Meeting-house of the First Parish in Concord, 
March 8, 1891. 

The Story of a Concord Farm and its Owners . . 147 

Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum, February 1, 1883. 

Concord Fight 174 

Printed in the Unitarian Review, April, 1875. 

Concord during the Shays Rebellion 195 

Written during the year 1877. 

My Memories of Concord in the Great Civil War . 245 

Paper read before the Old Concord Post, Grand Army of the Republic, 
March 17, 1886. 

A Fortnight with the Sanitary 268 

Printed in the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1865. 



lisxellaneousf papers?* 



Chevalier Bayard : A Saint and Hero of the Mid- 
dle Ages 282 

Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum, January 10, 1894. 

Francis Drake and his Times 305 

Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum, January 26, 1870. 

John Calvin 327 

Printed in the Christian Examiner, July, 1860. 

Saints who have had Bodies 364 

Printed in the Atlantic Monthly, October, 1865. 

Our Bedouins : What can we do with them ? . . . 394 
Printed in the Unitarian Review, August, 1877. 

Memoir of Grindall Reynolds, Senior 422 

Printed in an Account of the Seventy-first Anniversary of the Providence 
Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers, February 27, 18G0. 



CONTENTS. vii 

Sermons!. 

PACK 

The Plague of the Heart. October 4, 1868 , . . . 42s 

Wells of Baca. September 28, 1879 437 

But. April 4, 1880 445 

Beauty for Ashes. June 3, 1883 454 

Tongs of Pure Gold. September 17, 1893 463 

Sermon at Baltimore. October 29, 1893 474 

The Power of Jesus' Life. January 7, 1894 .... 490 



Among Dr. Reynolds's other printed papers were the 
following : — 

Discourse preached at Jamaica Plain, July 21, 1850, on the 

DEATH OF ZaCHART TaTLOR, PRESIDENT OF THE UnITED StATES. 

Discourse preached on leaving the old Meeting-House at Ja- 
maica Plain, West Roxbury, Massachusetts, March 20, 1853. 

The Moral Office of the Teacher. American Institute of In- 
struction, August 21, 1855. 

The Rationale of Prayer. Monthly Religious Magazine, July, 1858. 

English Naval Power and English Colonies. Atlantic Monthly, 
July, 1863. 

The French Struggle for Naval and Colonial Power. At- 
lantic Monthly, November, 1863. 

Mexico. Atlantic Monthly, July, 1864. 

Colonel George L. Prescott. July 18, 1864. 

The Late Insurrection in Jamaica. Atlantic Monthly, April, 1866. 

Borneo and Rajah Brooke. Atlantic Monthly, December, 1866. 

Parish Organization. Monthly Religious Magazine, July, 1867. 

Abyssinia and King Theodore. Atlantic Monthly, June, 1868. 

Sermon in Commemoration of April 19, 1775. April 18, 1875. 

The New Religion. Unitarian Review, August, 1879. 

Concord: Drake's History of Middlesex County, 1880. 

Ecclesiastical and Denominational Tendencies. Unitarian Re- 
view, May, 1889. 



INTRODUCTION. 

'T~^HIS book contains a few examples of the work of 
-■- a faithful, busy, and useful life. Dr. Reynolds 
was first of all, and above all, a Christian minister. 
He was a man to whose intellectual and moral nature 
faith, and not scepticism, was congenial. He accepted 
without misgiving the religious belief known as Unita- 
rianism, substantially as it was held and preached by 
William Ellery Channing and his contemporaries. But 
he respected the understanding and liberty of thought 
of other men. He had a large tolerance. He had also 
a genial and affectionate nature, which led him to form 
hearty friendships with men whom he accounted worthy, 
according to his somewhat severe standard of personal 
excellence, without regard to differences of belief. So 
he had the kindliest personal relations with the rep- 
resentatives of other denominations. He cared little for 
discussing questions about which Christians differ, al- 
though he was fully equipped for such discussions when 
his duty seemed to him to require them. But he stated 
with great power and with great beauty the arguments 
which lie at the foundation of the Christian faith, and at 
the foundation of good morals and purity and upright- 
ness in personal conduct. It is hoped the sermons 



X INTRODUCTION. 

here printed are worth preserving, and will be valued 
not only for their literary excellence and high order 
of eloquence, but as exhibiting fairly the spirit of 
Dr. Reynolds's faith. 

Dr. Reynolds's work as a Christian minister had, of 
course, the largest part of his heart. Next to that was 
his affection for the town of Concord. From the time 
of his settlement as Minister of the First Parish, in July, 
1858, until his death, he entered into the life of the 
people of the town almost as if every family in it had 
been his near kindred. He had an enthusiasm for its 
history and antiquities. He soon became the trusted 
and confidential friend of nearly every family in the 
town, and in that way became acquainted with its history 
and traditions, so that he probably knew more about the 
town than any other person, although there are many 
families there who have dwelt on the lands where they 
now live since the town was settled by Bulkeley, Wil- 
lard, Hosmer, and their companions, in 1635. So his 
mind became a storehouse of its local and family tradi- 
tions. Indeed, if the best example of the character, 
faith, and practice of New England Unitarianism of the 
close of the nineteenth century, or if the best example 
of the character and citizenship of the town of Concord 
for that period were to be sought, it is believed that 
those who knew him will agree that there can be none 
better found of either than Dr. Reynolds. He was a 
man of great business capacity. He managed the con- 
cerns of the American Unitarian Association with singu- 



INTRODUCTION. xi 

lar wisdom, discretion, and success. He was a pillar in 
the town and a pillar in the Church. When he died it 
seemed as if something substantial and essential had 
been subtracted from both. 

He had also a taste and capacity for historical inves- 
tigation which, with his charming English style, would 
have enabled him to gain great distinction in that de- 
partment of literature if he could have devoted his life 
to it. The papers upon that class of subjects inserted 
here are the work of hours spared from the engrossing 
employments of his profession. But they will amply 
vindicate this statement. 

GEORGE F. HOAR. 
Worcester, Massachusetts, 
September 30, 1895. 



AUTOBIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.^ 

GRINDALL REYNOLDS was born in Franconia, 
New Hampshire, December 22nd, 1822. His 
father, Grindall Reynolds, was a Revolutionary soldier, 
serving as was the custom for periods of three or six 
months as private, ensign, lieutenant, and captain. At 
the time of his son's birth he was in charge of some 
large iron works, which four years later burned down 
and were never rebuilt. Late in life he married Cynthia 
Kendall, the daughter of a Revolutionary soldier. The 
second child and oldest son of this marriage was the 
subject of this sketch. At four years of age the boy 

1 At the request of the editor of the " Harvard Graduates' Mag- 
azine," Dr. Reynolds wrote for the September number this brief 
sketch of his life. It was written in July, 1894, at Fitzwilliam, 
New Hampshire, where he was spending his vacation according to 
his custom. It was the last bit of work from his pen except a 
few letters, as he died September 30th. He sent with it to the 
editor the following letter : — 

Fitzwilliam, N. H., July 2, 1894. 
My dear Mr. Thayer, — Enclosed find the facts of my life ; more 
of them I suspect than you will care to use. So I cheerfully hand 
my manuscript over to the tender mercy of your critical eye and 
your wise scissors. Do what you wiU with it, or nothing. I am 
ready to give you what you can justly ask ; but I have no desire 
to spread abroad my exceedingly feeble glories. 

Very sincerely, 

Grindall Reyxolds. 



XIV AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

was sent to the district school, having however learned 
his letters and to read the Bible at his mother's knee. 
The schoolhouse, as he recalls it, was as rude in con- 
struction, its desks as primitive and hacked, its seats as 
hard, and the discipline within it as harsh and unrea- 
sonable as any that historians have described or roman- 
cers painted. When he was five years old the family 
moved to Boston, living first on Essex Street and then 
on Fort Hill. He attended the primary school at the 
corner of Federal and High Streets until, at seven years 
of age, he was promoted to the Washington Grammar 
School. 

At twelve years he graduated, receiving a Franklin 
medal. Having passed an examination, he became a 
pupil in the English High School. Here from various 
reasons he had the good fortune to be for two and a 
half of his three years' course under the immediate in- 
struction of Thomas Sherwin, than whom no nobler man 
and no better teacher ever stood in a school-room. At 
the age of fifteen and one half years he graduated, again 
receiving a Franklin medal. 

Long vacations were not in those days the fashion, 
either in schools or anywhere else. So in less than 
three weeks the boy found himself in the store of 
Thomas Tarbell & Co., wholesale dry-goods merchants. 
There he remained, passing through all the grades from 
errand-boy to book-keeper, four years and a half, leav- 
ing in March, 1843, to fit himself to enter Cambridge 
Divinity School. He studied one year and a half under 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. xv 

the direction of Rev. Chandler Robbins, and upon exam- 
ination became a member of the Cambridge Divinity 
School, September, 1844, from which he graduated in 
June, 1847. 

The first Sunday after he left the School he preached 
in the Unitarian church at Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 
and in January, 1848, was ordained as its pastor. Feb- 
ruary 7th, he married Lucy Maria Dodge, born Septem- 
ber 15th, 1827, died February 18th, 1887. Here he 
remained something more than ten years, until he ac- 
cepted a call to be the minister of the First Parish in 
Concord, Massachusetts. Of this parish he was installed 
as minister July, 1858, and has remained there ever 
since, twenty-three years as active pastor, and after- 
wards as honorary pastor. In May, 1881, Mr. Reynolds 
was elected Secretary of the American Unitarian Asso- 
ciation, which post he still holds. The position of min- 
ister of a large parish, or of the chief executive officer 
of a religious body, affords scanty leisure for literary 
pursuits and especially for writing not strictly in the 
line of official duty. Still, he has furnished eight or 
ten articles for denominational magazines, such as the 
Christian Examiner and the Unitarian Review, as many 
more for the Atlantic Monthly, while perhaps an equal 
number have appeared in pamphlet form or otherwise. 
In 1860 Harvard conferred on him the honorary de- 
gree of Master of Arts, and in 1894 that of Doctor of 
Divinity. 



President Eliot used these words in conferring the 
degree of Doctor of Divinity : — 

" In rebus divhiis orator em eloquentem, administra- 
torem prudentem, ah Unitariis rationihus suis optime 
praepositum." 



KING PHILIP'S WAR; 

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ATTACK 
ON BROOKFIELD IN AUGUST, 1675. 

Read before the American Antiquarian Society, October 21, 1887. 

THIS paper does not propose to give an account 
of King Philip's War, as a whole. To do 
that with any thoroughness would require a volume. 
It would rather confine itself to a statement of the 
reasons why the war happened to take place, and to 
a somewhat full sketch of a single event of that 
war. 

The subject has for me what I may call a traditional 
attraction. My ancestor, Captain Nathaniel Reynolds, 
was one of the original settlers, who after the war took 
possession of Mount Hope, the home of the Wampa- 
noags, and named it Bristol. My great-grandfather, 
Benjamin Reynolds, was the first boy christened in the 
new town ; while my grandfather, John Reynolds, and 
my father, Grindall Reynolds, first saw the light and 
were reared to manhood amid the associations of the 
ancient hamlet. 

No historian, as it seems to me, has pointed out 
with sufficient clearness the causes which made this 
war, not only probable, but inevitable. A little sketch 
of the First Church, Bristol, Rhode Island, appeared 
in 1872. In that sketch you find this statement. It 
1 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 



refers to the grant of the tov/nship in I68I.1 "The 
whole of Plymouth County was then settled, except this 
territory, which was the only spot left uncovered in the 
western march of English population. " This is literally 
true. When the "Mayflower " dropped anchor off Ply- 
mouth the Wampanoags held the whole region as their 
hunting ground. Of this great tract all they retained 
in 1675 was a little strip, called then Mount Hope, 
scarcely six miles long and two miles wide. The 
southern line of English possession had been drawn 
right across Bristol Neck, enclosing, and almost im- 
prisoning, the tribe in a little peninsula, washed on all 
sides, except the north, by the waters of Narragan- 
sett and Mount Hope bays. As if to emphasize this 
fact, their neighbors, the people of Swanzey, "set 
up a very substantial fence quite across the great 
neck. "2 

That some freedom to fish and hunt in the old terri- 
tory was granted is probable. But in the nature of the 
case each year narrowed its scope. Governor Winslow 
says, "Before these troubles broke out the English did 
not possess a single foot of land in the Colony but was 
fairly obtained from the Indians." ^ No doubt this 
may have been true. No less true was it that the 
owners of the soil hardly comprehended the meaning of 
transactions by which they sold their birthright for a 
mess of pottage. Even what remained was coveted. 
To protect them in it, in 1668 it was necessary to 
order,* "that noe person shall ... on any pretence 
whatsoever buy or receive any of those lands that 

1 Historical Sketch of the Fu'st Church, Bristol, R. I., by J. P. 
Lane, p. 8. 
Ilubb 
Plymouth Laws, 221. 



2 ilubbard's Intlian AVars. ^ Plymouth Eecords, x. 363. 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 3 

appertaine unto Mount Hope. " Yet one year later the 
Court granted 1 one John Gorham a hundred acres 
within the bounds of Bristol, provided it could be 
purchased of the Indians. 

Another change had come just as hard to bear. To 
the men who landed at Plymouth Rock the Wampanoags 
seemed to be, and no doubt were, a dirty, half-naked, 
and half-starved lot of barbarians. 2 But these barba- 
rians were independent, and exercised a controlling 
influence over the tribes of central Massachusetts. 
"Massasoit," says Drake, "was for an Indian a great 
king." As an equal he made a treaty with the whites; 
and was assured that^ "King James would esteem him 
his friend and ally." Fifty years pass. The son of 
Massasoit, according to the Puritan annalist, had 
divested himself of all independence.* He had meekly 
acknowledged himself and his people to be subjects of 
the King of England and New Plymouth and under 
their laws. Nor was this subjection a dead letter. 
The chiefs were summoned to appear and answer accu- 
sations often ill founded. Restrictive laws were applied 
to trade, and even to personal habits. Sachems were 
arrested, tried, and executed for acts committed by 
order of their chief. Of King Philip the Plymouth 
Commissioners write that he was in arms,^ "from a 
guilty feare that we should send for him and bring 
him to tryall with the other murderers." All this 
may have been the necessary result of the contact of 
the strong with the weak. It may indeed, as Palfrey 
argues, have benefited the Indian himself. But it sub- 

1 See History of First Church, Bristol. 

2 See Palfrey, 1. 183. 

3 Drake's Indian AYars. * See Hubbard's Indian "Wars. 
5 Plymouth Records, x. 304. 



4 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

jected him to restraints which to a savage were well- 
nigh intolerable. 

Add, now, that the colonists, having obtained the 
land and tethered the owners, had no faith in him; 
that they were haunted with the feeling that he was 
" plotting mischiefe " ; that repeatedly Philip and his 
brother were summoned as suspected criminals and 
forced to submit to humiliating conditions; that the 
brother actually died of a fever, occasioned in part by 
the hardship endured on one of these arrests, and in 
part also by the rage and shame engendered by this 
very humiliation. This is the way matters stood in 
1675 according to the conquerors' own statement. 
Read Philip's pathetic story recorded in Arnold's his- 
tory and you will know how it looked to the conquered. 
Said he to John Borden of Rhode Island ^ : — 

" The English who came to this country were but a 
handful of people, forlorn, poor, and distressed. My 
father was then Sachem. He relieved their distresses. 
He gave them land to build and plant upon. He did 
all in his power to serve them. Their numbers rapidly 
increased. My father's counsellors became uneasy and 
alarmed. They advised him to destroy them before 
they should become too strong. But my father was 
also the father of the English. His advice prevailed. 
It was concluded to give victuals to the English. 
Experience has taught that the fears of my father's 
counsellors were right. By various means they got 
possessed of a great part of his territory. My elder 
brother became Sachem. They pretended to suspect 
him of evil designs. He was seized and confined, 
and thrown into sickness and died. After I became 
Sachem they disarmed all my people. They tried them 
1 Arnold's Rhode Island, i. 391. 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 5 

by their own laws, assessed damages wliicli they could 
not pay, and their land was taken. Thus tract after 
tract is gone. But a small part of the dominion of my 
ancestors remains. / am determined not to live till I 
have no country.''^ 

So it is evident that life and death grapple, called 
King Philip's War, had to come. I am with those 
who doubt the accepted theory about it. Our fathers 
excited by natural, and for the most part well founded 
fears, exaggerated both the capacity and plans of Philip. 
They believed that he had formed a gigantic Indian 
Confederacy. This theory rests on slender foundations. 
The King Philip of the annals is certainly a creature 
of the imagination. The real Philip had not head 
enough to plan such a confederacy, nor courage enough 
to carry it into effect. His commanding influence, if 
he ever had any, began with the attack on Swanzey and 
closed with his flight to the Nipmucks. From that 
moment as a great figure he disappears. Indeed, if we 
suppose the affair at Swanzey to be the culmination of 
years of plotting, what further proof of Philip's weak- 
ness is needed ? There was no preparation whatever 
for defence. A few hundred hasty levies in forty-eight 
hours swept his tribe out of existence. There is very 
slight evidence that he was in command at any of the 
later undertakings. He certainly fled for a time to the 
Mohawks. Had not a certain Nemesis brought him 
back to die on his own hearthstone, and so lent pathos 
to life's close, he might almost have been forgotten, 
Philip foresaw, 1 as we have already seen, that soon he 
must be landless, and a slave instead of a king, if he 
did not fight. Of that we have absolute evidence. We 
may readily admit that he did what he could, with his 
1 See Ai-nold's Rhode Island, 395. 



6 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

own tribe, and with the Nipmucks, who were allied or 
united to his tribe by peculiarly close ties, to prepare 
for the emergency. But confederacy is a large term 
to apply to such despairing struggles. In fact there 
was no simultaneousness in the outbreak. It began in 
June with the raid on Swanzey. The Nipmucks rose 
in July; the tribes along the Connecticut River in 
August; those of New Hampshire and Maine in Sep- 
tember and October. The Narragansetts never rose 
at all ; but were attacked and destroyed in mid-winter, 
because they did not deliver up fugitives ; and because 
their loyalty was suspected ; — and, as it would seem 
from the testimony of the Indian spy ^ employed by the 
English, unjustly. 

The simplest explanation is probably the truest. 
Already the Indian chief had been repeatedly summoned 
to appear to answer to the charge of plotting against 
the colonists. Once he obtained deliverance by promis- 
ing to deliver up the arms of his tribe ; again by signing 
articles acknowledging himself a subject of the King 
of England; and the third time, as Increase Mather 
states it, by giving "a sum of money to defray the 
charges which his insolent clamors had put the Colony 
into," or, as Philip puts it, "he was seized and confined 
till he sold another tract of country." All this was 
sufficiently exasperating. But the cup of his indigna- 
tion was full, when Sausamon, a Natick Indian, who 
had in times past taken refuge at Mount Hope, and 
been a subject and friend of Philip, in 1675 went to 
Plymouth with charges against his benefactor, and 
those charges were accepted as true. The death of 
Sausamon — slain as it was believed by Philip's order 
— naturally followed. The arrest of three Wampanoag 
1 See James Quanopokit's Relations in Mass. Ai-chives. 



KING PHILIP'S WAK. 7 

sachems for this supposed murder, their condemnation 
and execution under English law, precipitated hostili- 
ties. The young warriors, already dissatisfied with 
Philip's timidity, sprang to arms. The rest was like 
the spread of a prairie fire, where all the herbage is 
ready for conflagration. Tribe after tribe, by a sort of 
warlike contagion, rose. The habits of the race made 
bloodshed natural, while jealousy and fear, and often 
sense of injury, made it certain. 

The first act of the war closed with Philip's flight 
from Mount Hope. At this seat of what, we are asked 
to believe, was a long conceived, subtle, and powerful 
confederacy, almost literally no resistance was made. 
In forty-eight hours after the appearance of the hastily 
gathered English soldiery, the chief was a fugitive, 
and his tribe, as such, swept out of existence. 

The second act could open only in just one place. 
Where could Philip flee ? North were the solid settle- 
ments of Plymouth and Massachusetts, whose first 
levies had crushed his tribe at a blow. West was 
Narragansett Bay, and beyond the Rhode Island and 
Connecticut towns. But northwest, in central Massa- 
chusetts, was a tract more than fifty miles square 
where the Indian had sway. It was the Nipmuck 
country. It included nearly all of Worcester County 
and a large part of Hampshire County. In the centre 
of this region was Brookfield, with possibly one hundred 
and fifty people ; at Worcester seven deserted houses. 
Now the Nipmucks were Philip's natural allies. Be- 
tween them and the Wampanoags there had been a 
close bond, either of friendship or subjection. It has 
been conjectured, and latterly asserted,^ that Massasoit 
closed his life at Brookfield as chief of the Quabaugs. 
1 See History of North Broolcfield, 46, 47. 



8 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

It was therefore inevitable that the defeated chief 
should take refuge among them, and that his coming 
should kindle afresh the flame. 

The assault of Brookfield was no accident. Brook- 
field was the half-way station between the established 
life on the seaboard, and the hopeful beginnings of life 
up and down the Connecticut River. In round terms 
it was thirty miles from the outposts of Eastern Massa- 
chusetts, and as many miles from the first hamlets of 
"Western Massachusetts. Its maintenance, if the Con- 
necticut River towns were to be saved, was of vital 
importance. So vital did it appear, that, though under 
stress of great difficulty it was twice abandoned, the 
authorities at once ordered its reoccupation ; and to 
the close of the war it remained a place of refuge and 
arms. We may well believe that the Indians under- 
stood, quite as clearly as the whites, the importance of 
the post and its weakness. Their purpose to attack it 
must have been coincident with their resolution to go 
to war. 

Apparently the colonists were equally aware of the 
importance of the post and its danger. For in the 
latter part of June the Governor and Council of Mas- 
sachusetts sent messengers to the Western Indians 
to keep them, if possible, from uniting with Philip. 
Satisfactory assurances were received from the sachems. 
These assurances were very likely made in good faith. 
But with the actual breaking out of hostility the younger 
warriors' lust for battle swept away every principle of 
prudence. Early in July the authorities, still distrust- 
ful, sent that hardy frontiersman and scout, Ephraim 
Curtis, to Brookfield, nominally to confirm the peace, 
really, to use their racy language, " to make a perfect 
discovery of the motions of the Nipmug or Western 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 9 

Indians. " His report could not have been reassuring. 
He found the Indians, about two hundred strong, 
encamped on a sort of little island, partly surrounded 
by a river, and wholly surrounded by miry swamps, 
called Wenamessit, — and about ten miles from the 
feeble English settlement. They were in a state of 
great excitement. Some cried out that he and his 
company should be killed. Others dissuaded from 
such a course. Guns loaded and cocked were placed 
at his breast. The air was filled with uproar. Finally 
he had an interview with the sachems, and "left 
them," as he says, "well apcased. "i At any rate he 
got away with a whole skin, which under the circum- 
stances was hardly to have been expected. Curtis 
made a second visit to the same place ten days later. 
He found the savages outwardly more quiet but really 
more dangerous, as they were then committed to hostile 
measures. They promised to send sachems to Boston 
to speak to the great white sachem; a promise which 
they did not mean to keep.^ Then it was, on the 27th 
of July, that the authorities ordered Captain Edward 
Hutchinson, who had just returned from a similar 
mission to the Narragansctts, to take Captain Thomas 
Wheeler of Concord and his little squad of twenty-five 
Middlesex troops and go to Quaboag. These men 
were, with a solitary exception, from Concord or the 
towns adjoining it. Captain Wheeler was a Concord 
man ; so was his son. Lieutenant Thomas ; so was 
Simon Davis who succeeded him in command ; and of 
the remaining eighteen, — though it is not possible to 
decide with absolute certainty, — probably ten came 
from the same town. The rest, with the probable 
exception of one, Zachariah Phillips of Boston, came 
^ Massachusetts Archives, Ixvii. ^ j|ji(j_ 



10 KDsG PHILIP'S WAR. 

from the adjoining towns of Chelmsford, Billerica, and 
Sudbmy. So the whole stress of danger and difficulty 
rested upon people of that immediate neighborhood. 

The object of this visit was threefold: to confirm 
the Indians, if it might be, in peaceful counsels; to 
call them to account for their failure to send according 
to promise an embassy to Boston ; and it was added, — 
we now quote the language of the instructions,^ — "in 
prosecution of this affayre, if you should meet with any 
Indians that stand in opposition to you, or that declare 
themselves to be your enemies, then you are ordered to 
ingage them, if you see reason for it, and endeavor to 
reduce them by force of armes. " Nothing could have 
been more foolhardy than this expedition. When we 
consider the nature of Ephraira Curtis's report, and 
remember that it was known that the Nipmucks had 
already attacked Mcndon, the only explanation of this 
sending of twenty-five chosen men to seemingly sure 
death, is the utter contempt in which the Puritan 
held his foe. Was peace sought ? Then Ephraim 
Curtis and his two or three Natick Indians were more 
likely to achieve it. Was war to be waged? What 
were twenty-five men to cope with two hundred or five 
hundred savages on their own soil ? 

Upon the incidents of Brookfield fight we need not 
dwell. They are simple and well known. The little 
force 1 "came on the Lord's day about noon (being 
August 1), to Brookfield, understanding that the 
Indians were about ten miles to the northwest." Four 
messengers were sent to tell the Indians that the 
troops were there, not to make war, but to confirm 
peace. They found "the young men . . . stout in 

1 Massachusetts Archives, Isvii, 

- Captain Thomas Wheeler's Narrative. 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. H 

their speeches and surly in their carriage. " The chiefs, 
however, agreed to meet the English the next morning 
at a plain three miles from Brookfield. Accompanied 
by three of the principal inhabitants, the little force 
marched thither, but found no one. Captain Hutchinson 
and his colleague, Captain Wheeler, were then in 
great doubt; but, persuaded by the Brookfield men, 
who had entire confidence in the good intentions of the 
savages, concluded to march to the "swamp where the 
Indians then were. " Between a long rocky hill and a 
miry swamp, where there was room to ride only in 
single file, they were surprised by two hundred or more 
of the enemy. Five soldiers and the three inhabitants 
were killed. Captain Hutchinson was mortally wound- 
ed, and died seventeen days after at Marlborough. Cap- 
tain Thomas Wheeler and his son Thomas and two others 
were wounded, but recovered ; though it is believed that 
the lives both of the Captain and his son were mate- 
rially shortened on account of their injuries. Among 
those killed was Samuel Smedley, son of Baptiste 
Smedley, one of the early settlers of Concord, of 
Huguenot extraction the name would suggest, who 
owned and occupied a farm near where to-day Mr. 
Franklin Daken lives. Mr. Walcott, in his valuable 
work, "Concord in the Colonial Period," states that a 
son-in-law had already been killed at Nashoba, and 
adds that " the death of his son was too heavy a blow 
for the already severely taxed powers of the aged father, 
and the tragedy was made complete by the death of 
Baptiste Smedley only a fortnight after." I cannot 
refrain from quoting Captain Wheeler's account of his 
own escape, as found in that narrative which has been 
justly termed "the epic of Colonial times." The 
Indians, he says, " fired violently out of the swamp and 



12 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

from behind the bushes on the hillside, wounded me 
sorely, and shot my horse under me, so that he faulter- 
ing and falling, I was forced to leave him, divers of 
the Indians being then but a few rods distant from me. 
My son Thomas Wheeler flying with the rest of the 
company missed me amongst them, and fearing that I 
was either slain or much endangered returned towards 
the swamp again, though he had then received a dan- 
gerous wound in the reins, where he saw me in the 
danger aforesaid. Whereupon he endeavored to rescue 
me, shewing himself therein a loving and dutiful son, 
he adventuring himself into great peril of his life to 
help me in that distress, there being many of the 
enemies about me, my son set me on his own horse 
and so escaped awhile on foot himself, until he caught 
a horse whose rider was slain, on which he mounted 
and so through God's great mercy we both escaped." 
" But for this attempt for my deliverance he received 
another dangerous wound." It is worth while to recall 
occasionally this simple old story of filial fidelity and 
filial heroism. The remnant of the troop, leaving 
their dead where they fell, rode as they could up the 
steep and rocky hill, and were conducted by the 
Christian Indian guides, through paths known to them, 
back to Brookfield, and took refuge in the largest and 
strongest house in the town. There were gathered, as 
the historian of North Brookfield believes, eighty-two 
persons, thirteen soldiers, thirteen citizens, six wounded 
men, and about fifty women and children. And there 
for nearly three days they endured a siege in a fortress 
whose sole bulwarks were the single boards of an 
ordinary dwelling-house, through which the bullets of 
the enemy constantly passed, killing, wonderful to 
relate! only one person, Henry Young of Concord. 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 13 

The savages, to use Hubbard's words, "for two days 
assaulted that poor handful of helpless people; both 
night and day pouring in shot incessantly with guns; 
also thrusting poles with firebrands, and rags dipt in 
brimstone tyed to the ends of them to fire the house ; 
at last they used this devilish stratagem, to fill a cart 
with hemp, flax and other combustible matter, and so 
thrusting it backward with poles spliced together a 
great length, after they had kindled it ; but as soon as 
it had begun to take fire, a storm of rain unexpectedly 
falling, put out the fire, else all the poor people would 
either have been consumed by merciless flames, or else 
have fallen into the hands of their cruel enemies, like 
wolves continually yelling and gaping for their prey." 
Twice that brave scout, Ephraim Curtis, strove to steal 
through their lines, and was driven back. The third 
time he succeeded, creeping a long way on his hands 
and knees, and bore tidings of their peril to Marl- 
borough. On the evening of the third day their hearts 
were gladdened by the appearance of ]\Iajor Simon 
Willard and Captain James Parker of Groton, with 
fifty-one men, including five Christian Indians. The 
siege was at an end; and, as a home of men, for ten 
years Brookfield ceased to be. 

Just where did Brookfield fight take place ? Upon 
this point there has been earnest and long-continued 
discussion. Nor is there to-day any perfect agreement. 
Many hold that the scene of conflict is to be sought at 
some point in the defile from the head of Wicaboag 
Pond, crossing the present town line into New 
Braintree. Others maintain that it is to be sought on 
the easterly side of the "Winimisset Yalley in New 
Braintree, anciently embraced in Hardwick. Mr. 
Temple in his History of North Brookfield has admi- 



14 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

rably stated the evidence for the first theory ; while the 
arguments for the other are clearly put by Dr. Paige in 
his article in the thirty-eighth volume of the Genea- 
logical Register, entitled " Wicaboag or Winimisset ? " 
Several members of this Society passed a delightful 
day in last June, under the auspices of its President, 
surveying the whole region. One would wish to visit 
the spot many times before committing himself thor- 
oughly to either theory. What I should say would be 
that the valley beyond Wicaboag answers well to 
Captain Wheeler's description : " A very rocky hill is 
on the right hand," under which one could march sixty 
or seventy rods. " A thick swamp is on the left hand. " 
Between the two is a narrow defile, to-day in places 
"so bad that we could march only in single file." At 
a little distance an Indian trail is said to lead cir- 
cuitously back to Brookfield. The objections to this 
theory are twofold: first, the defile is not in direct 
line ten miles, as Captain Wheeler is thought to state, 
but only five and a half from the house in which the 
fugitives took refuge ; and second, if the swamp where 
the fight occurred was the same as that which Ephraim 
Curtis visited when the Quaboags were encamped on 
their four-acre island, then the little brook, flowing 
near the rocky hill, does not answer very well to the 
muddy river described by him. 

If you turn now to the second theory, you can say, 
that the Winimisset swamp is nearly ten miles from 
Brookfield ; that it is unquestionably a spot where the 
Indians had a somewhat permanent encampment, and 
that a muddy river still exists. On the other hand, no 
such clearly marked defile as the narrative seems to 
call for is found. The determination of this question 
depends upon the decision made on just two points: 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 15 

first, was the swamp where, as Wheeler states it, "the 
Indians then were " the one where Curtis found them, 
and where Captain Hutchinson's messengers sought 
them ? That is, did the Indians fight near their home 
or away from it ? Second, does Captain Wheeler's ten 
miles mean in direct line, or by the way which he says 
"none of us knew," as they rode, to avoid danger of 
ambuscade, " in open places " ? The best judges will 
differ. As for myself, I lean with moderation to 
" Wicaboag. " 

We cannot close without some allusion to the English 
actors in this tragedy. For I question whether, in any 
human transaction, out of such a little body of men you 
could pick so many who were in themselves so worthy 
of remembrance, and from whom have come so many 
descendants of mark. 

Let us begin with Captain Edward Hutchinson, a 
notable member of a notable family. Son of William 
and the celebrated Ann Hutchinson, he was born in 
England in 1613. His father owned and occupied an 
estate, on a part of which the famous Corner Book- 
store in Boston now stands, and the son's early man- 
hood was probably spent there. ^ In 1637 he was 
included in the list of such as had been seduced and 
led into dangerous error by Mr. Wheelwright and Mrs. 
Hutchinson, and who were ordered to deliver up " all 
such guns, pistols, shot, and matches as they shall be 
owner of." He lived however to recover the entire 
confidence of the authorities, and to obtain positions of 
honor both in military and civil life. He was a ser- 
geant in 1642,2 ensign in 1645, and in 1664 was elected 
captain of the celebrated "Three County Troope," 
so called because its members came from Suffolk, 
"* Mass. Records, 1. 211. ^ Mass. Records. 



16 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

Essex, and Middlesex Counties. In 1642 he was sent 
to the great tribe of Narragansetts, " with certaine in- 
structions to demand satisfaction for certain injuries." 
Thirty -three years later, two weeks after the opening 
of King Philip's War, two weeks before his fatal 
errand to Brookfield, he was one of those who dictated 
terms of peace to the same tribe. His opposition, in 
which he stood almost alone, to the cruel laws against 
the Quakers better entitles him to remembrance than 
all his civic or martial honors. He was fortunate in 
his descendants. His son Elisha was twenty-five years 
a member of the Council, Chief Justice of the Court of 
Common Pleas, and Commander in Chief of an expedi- 
tion to Maine against the French and Indians. His 
grandson Thomas was also for many years a member 
of the Council; and the Eliot Schoolhouse in North 
Bennet Street, Boston, stands a monument to his 
liberality and to the fierce prejudice generated by the 
Revolution, which refused to perpetuate his memory in 
the name of the schoolhouse he gave. The second 
grandson, Edward, was Selectman, Representative, 
Judge of Probate, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, 
and Treasurer of Harvard College thirty years. In 
Thomas Hutchinson the second, great-grandson of 
Captain Edward, the honors of the family culminated. 
We think of him as Tory and refugee ; but for many 
years he was the most distinguished and most popular 
of the sons of Massachusetts. Simply enumerate the 
positions he held ! He was ten years a Representative, 
two years Speaker of the House, sixteen years member 
of the Council, six years Judge of Probate, Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court many years. Lieu- 
tenant Governor thirteen years, and Governor three 
years. In 1760, while Governor Pownal was a1)sent, 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 17 

he actually held and exercised the offices of Judge of 
Probate, Chief Justice, Councillor, Lieutenant Governor 
and acting Governor, an accumulation of offices perhaps 
never before or since held by one person; and held 
apparently by him to the entire satisfaction of the 
community, until in the great controversy he sided 
with the King. 

Of Captain Thomas Wheeler and his descendants 
we know less. The name was too common a one to 
permit the most accomplished antiquarian to unravel 
the various genealogies. But his " narrative " alone 
ought to make his name immortal; it is so clear, so 
full and so charged with the thought and feeling of 
the time. Our first notice of him is found in the 
Massachusetts Records; wherein it appears that cer- 
tain " inhabitants of Concord, Chelmsford, Billerikey, 
Lancaster and Groten," having petitioned, "the Court 
judgeth it meet that such persons living in the frontier 
towns " be " legally capacitated to lyst themselves 
troopers "under Thomas Wheeler Sen', whom the 
Court appoints to be their Leiftenant." Two years 
after he was made Captain, and so remained till his 
death. This occurred one year and four months after 
the fight. His son, the Ensign, followed him the next 
month, leaving as a townsman records only a horse, 
pistols, cutlash, and gun, valued at £6 12s., the sole 
reward, it would seem, of his most valiant service. 
Captain Wheeler's descendants appear to have been 
chiefly plain yeomen, whose vocation has not brought 
them into public notice; but in this generation few 
men have had a career more honorable than the late 
Vice President Wheeler, in whose veins flowed the 
blood of the old Puritan Captain. 

Lieutenant Simon Davis, who succeeded to the com- 
o 



18 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

mand after his superior officers were disabled, was a 
Concord man, whose home was near what is now the 
Abel Clark place. According to Wheeler's narrative 
it was " his lively spirit " which kept up the courage of 
the survivors. He was one of the two sons of Dolor 
Davis, who was himself first probably of his name in 
the new country. Lieutenant Simon became Captain 
Simon, and in King William's War, from 1689 to 
1697, with forty troopers and thirty foot soldiers, was 
appointed to defend the frontier from Dunstable to 
Marlborough. Of few men can it be said that three 
Massachusetts Governors have sprung from their loins. 
Yet John Davis, John Davis Long, and George Dexter 
Robinson are all descendants of Dolor Davis. Whether 
all come from Lieutenant Simon or from his brother 
and townsman, Samuel Davis, is not quite clear. 

Simon Willard, uncle of Lieutenant Simon Davis, 
who rescued the Brookfield garrison when it was in 
extremity, was one of the noted persons in early 
Massachusetts history. Coming from County Kent, as 
so many of our best did, with Peter Bulkeleyhe shared 
the honor of planting Concord. Twenty-four years 
later he was called to take the helm at Lancaster, and 
steered that frontier settlement through all the obstacles 
and dangers of its early life. He had held almost 
every post of duty, civic or military, and now at the 
allotted threescore years and ten he was giving his last 
moments to perilous public service. He left his stamp 
on his descendants. The period from 1689 to 1763 
was almost one long war between the colonists and the 
French and Indians. And during that time there was 
hardly a day in which one of Simon Willard's blood 
and name was not standing guard on the frontier, 
while two Presidents of Harvard attest the interest 
of the familv in sound learning. 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 19 

This account would be incomplete, and unjust in its 
incompleteness, without some allusion to Captain 
James Parker of Groton, who, as second in command, 
accompanied Major Willard and the rescuing party. 
He was, says Dr. Green in his " Groton during the 
Indian Wars," "in the early history of Groton without 
question its most influential inhabitant." This is 
easily seen to be true. There is hardly an important 
public paper relating to the infant town but has his 
signature. Was a meeting-house to be built he must 
be at the head of the committee to further it. Was a 
road to be laid out, who so fit to have part in doing it as 
" Sergeant Parker " ? He was Chairman of the first 
Board of Selectmen in 1662, and he appears in that 
capacity as late as 1694. He was Town Clerk for 
several years. With the first fear of an Indian war, 
on May 6, 1673, it was ordered that, " James Parker of 
Groaten, having had the care of the military company 
there for several yeares is appointed and ordered to be 
their leiftennant, and Wm. Larkin to be ensigne to the 
said Company there." Sixteen years after, when the 
conflict entitled "King William's War" was impend- 
ing, it was still the veteran James Parker who was 
called to lead the soldiers of the town, being appointed 
Captain in 1689. Judge Joel Parker was one of his 
descendants, and the Lawrence family, which has filled 
so large a space in the commercial, manufacturing, and 
philanthropic life of Massachusetts, is descended on one 
side from the Parkers, — whether of the Captain James 
branch, the genealogy of the family has not been suffi- 
ciently put in order to permit a definite statement. 

I reserve the most picturesque figure for the last : 
Ephraim Curtis, scout and interpreter. One wonders 
that so little has been made of this person; for you 



20 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

have to come down to the days of Robert Rogers, and 
Israel Putnam, and John Stark, before you find an indi- 
vidual who stands out so clearly on the background of 
our frontier history. He was the son of Henry Curtis, 
one of the first settlers of Sudbury, born in 1642, and 
so only thirty -three years old at Brookfield. He was 
evidently a man of courage and iron firmness, both in 
peace and war. No chapter in Lincoln's History of 
Worcester is more entertaining than the first, in which 
he gives an account of the contest between the Com- 
mittee of Settlements and one Ephraim Curtis, a young 
man from Sudbury. This young man had bought a 
grant of Ensign Thomas Noyes of two hundred and 
fifty acres, and had located it just where the Committee 
wanted to lay out town lots, especially one for the minis- 
ter, one for the meeting-house, and one for a mill. This 
was in 1669. A petition to the Great and General Court 
signed by four men of name and substance did not terrify 
the " young man. " Four years after he had added to the 
difficulty by taking possession of his ground and build- 
ing thereon a house, becoming, ns I judge, the first 
settler of Worcester. Things began to look serious, 
whereupon another petition, signed not only by the 
aforesaid four men of name and substance, but by 
twenty-nine persons proposing to settle, was sent to 
the General Court. They stated that they had made 
all proper offers to the young man, which he had 
declined. They intimate that if they cannot get the 
coveted two hundred and fifty acres they shall have to 
o-ive up the plantation. The affair was finally compro- 
mised by giving Curtis fifty acres in the village, on 
which a descendant still lives, and two hundred and 
fifty acres outside the village. When we consider that 
Daniel Henchman, Daniel Gookin, Richard Beers, and 



KING PHILIP'S WAR. 21 

Thomas Prentice constituted that Committee, — men 
of experience, men of high position and influence in 
the Colony, — we can understand of what metal the 
young man from Sudbury was made. In this frontier 
life Curtis had somehow become a sagacious scout, and 
had learned to speak with fluency the Indian tongue. 
These qualities, together with his known firmness and 
courage, made him the very man to send on the mission 
to the Nipmucks. In his narration of that expedition 
his coolness and undaunted bravery are hardly more 
evident than his power to picture vividly the exact 
condition of affairs. In the siege which followed, it 
was necessary that some one should carry, to Marl- 
borough news of the peril of the beleaguered garrison. 
Twice Curtis failed. But the third time he succeeded, 
creeping on his hands and knees through the enemies' 
lines. Thrice afterwards he appears on the Massachu- 
setts Eecords : once as a witness against an Indian 
chief; once as clothed with power to raise a company, 
"to march under his comands into the wood, and 
endeavor to " surprise, kill, or destroy any of the In- 
dians our enemies ; finally, liberty was given Ephraim 
Curtis "with such other Englishmen as he shall 
procure, provided they be not less than thirty men well 
armed, . . . to gather and improve for their own use all 
the Indian Corn of the Indian plantations belonging to 
our enemies the Indians that are fled." With these 
records my knowledge of this heroic character ends. 
Whether he went back to his trade as a carpenter, or 
peaceably tilled his acres, or remained to the end a 
daring scout and Indian fighter, I know not. It may 
be assumed, perhaps, that in 1718 he was dead, as his 
farm was then improved by his son. George William 
Curtis, the silver-tongued orator, traces back his origin 



22 KING PHILIP'S WAR. 

to this stalwart Puritan; and I think it may be 
admitted, that, in addition to persuasive speech, of 
which his ancestor does not seem to have been desti- 
tute, he inherits the capacity to have views of his own 
and to stand by them. 

With these personal sketches ends my account of the 
affair at Brookfield and of its actors. I do not propose 
to follow farther the desperate conflict. The war pur- 
sued its devious, cruel course till it closed, so far as 
our State was concerned, with the death, twelve months 
later, of Philip, who like a wounded wild beast sought 
his own lair to die. When it closed, the Wampanoags, 
who had welcomed the Pilgrim and given him food and 
kindness, as a tribe had ceased to exist. It was the 
first and the last independent Indian war on Massachu- 
setts soil. All later wars may properly be termed 
French and Indian wars. And the savage allies of 
the most Christian monarchs, the Kings of France, 
came largely from outside the Bay State. 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

Printed in the Unitarian Kevie^v, JVLiBCH, 1876. 

CAN we easily ascribe too much historical impor- 
tance to the siege of Boston ? It is true that, 
measured by the number of men employed and the 
munitions of war expended, it was not a great event. 
It is equally true that no brilliant military movements 
marked its course, unless, indeed, we except from 
this statement the occupation of Dorchester Heights. 
Neither did anything tragic lend to its closing hours 
pathetic interest. It was its real significance, the con- 
sequences which hung on victory or defeat, which have 
kept it fresh in the world's memory. When the army 
under Washington settled down on the hills which 
girt Boston, the question was not. Shall a petty provin- 
cial town be cleared of military intruders, or shall the 
little colony of which it is a part be permitted hence- 
forth to govern itself according to its chartered rights ? 
The problem was weightier : Should the foundations of 
this Western republic be laid in that generation, or 
wait a more favorable hour ? 

The assertion is a strong one, but it has in it at least 
the elements of probability. New England was then, 
for various reasons, the heart of the Revolution. Mer- 
cantile in grain, a system of mediaeval monopolies — 
called on the English statute-book Navigation Laws — 
had pressed like lead upon the neck of her commerce. 
Lono; before 1775 there was a Q;reat and wide discontent 



24 SIEGE AKD EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

within her borders. But the people who endured this 
wrong were of the stock of those Puritans who, from 
religious faith and political convictions alike, held that 
there were limitations both to royal and legislative 
power. They were of the same race as the men who 
drew the sword at Naseby and Marston Moor to defend 
legal rights, — who sent Charles I. to the scaffold, and 
drove his son James across the narrow channel, to be 
the object of the cold compassion and half-concealed 
scorn of all Europe. Besides, perhaps on this earth 
never was there so homogeneous a people as that which 
tilled the rough farms of New England, or clung to her 
rock-bound shores. As a result of all this, when new 
and intolerable burdens were laid on the Colonists, and 
the hour for action had come, New England was ready, 
and she presented a united front. The Tories, who 
southward almost neutralized the power of the patriots, 
here were so insignificant in numbers and influence 
that they were swept from the path of the Revolution 
without an effort. Add, now, that in the town of 
Boston was a knot of men whose boldness, prophetic 
insight, and political decision were wellnigh miracu- 
lous, and whose faculty of arousing masses to resistance 
was only equalled by their gift of imparting to that 
resistance order and irresistible method, and you can 
readily understand that New England was ripe for 
revolution, as the rest of the confederacy was not ripe; 
that Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and 
the long suspense around beleaguered Boston, were all 
needed to weld the widely scattered Colonies into one 
people. It seems probable, sometimes it seems certain, 
that had Great Britain, at the outset, appreciated the 
nature of the crisis, and put forth the whole of her 
mighty strength, and annihilated or led into captivity 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 25 

that first American army, she would have brought a 
pause to the Revolution which might have lasted a'' life- 
time. It is therefore impossible to award the sie-e of 
Boston too high a place in the list of those ev'^ents 
which have exercised a permanent influence in human 
history. 

The men of 1775, from Maine to Georgia, under- 
stood this. The unconscious recognition of the provi- 
dential position of the little Puritan town is one of the 
most striking features of the history of the period 
Here was a handful of fourteen or fifteen thousand 
people - not more than enough to make a respectable 
shire town — crowded into a narrow peninsula, whose 
surface was scarcely larger than a good farm; the 
inhabitants of a town around whose history no venerable 
traditions had gathered; a town not known as a central 
mart of commerce, or as a great seat of learning or art; 
beautiful for situation, but not beautiful from rich 
private mansions, or stately public edifices; marked 
only by one proud distinction, -the heroic devotion 
of her sons and daughters to the principles of true 
freedom. Yet towards this little town all eyes and 
hearts were turned. And when the British Ministry 
by the Boston Port Bill, shut up her harbor, destroyed 
her commerce, brought her rich men to poverty, and 
her poor men to the verge of starvation, they only 
crys alhzed sentiments of sympathy into deeds of 
brotherly kindness. Private purses were opened for 
her relief Neighboring towns offered to her distressed 
ci izens the shelter of rural homes. Every town and 
village in the Province, and every Colony outside it, 
strained their resources for her support. It takes a 
volume to record the offerings. Marblehead, rival sea- 
port, scorns to profit by her neighbor's misfortune. . 



26 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

She asks Boston merchants to use her wharves and 
storehouses as though they were their own. Maine 
sends her coasters laden with hundreds of cords of 
wood, Connecticut drives thither great droves of thou- 
sands of sheep. The Middle and Southern Colonies 
pour from their granaries corn and rye and wheat and 
flour by thousands of barrels and tens of thousands of 
bushels. South Carolina from her swamps gathers 
up a great, generous donation of rice, and with sympa- 
thy and patriotism, richer yet, sends it as her offering 
of good will. Some special instances are peculiarly in- 
teresting. Wethersfield, Connecticut, taxes her people 
one penny in a pound to support the poor of Boston. 
Temple, a little village, not ten years old, of a dozen or 
two families, nestling among the hills of New Hamp- 
shire, gladly gives fifty bushels of rye, the product of 
farms just Avon by hard labor from the primeval forest. 
Even the Indians of Martha's Vineyard feel the common 
pulsation, and proffer their gift. While from the 
adjoining hamlets the most varied supplies — fresh 
vegetables, potatoes, turnips and cabbages, pork, salt 
fish, butter and cheese, clothing and shoes, and even 
tobacco to cheer the weary heart — were carted over 
Boston Neck. Never, perhaps, in the world's history 
was there a more remarkable uprising of sympathy and 
generosity. 

And it is not to be forgotten that at the bottom of 
this generosity was the feeling that Boston was the 
vanguard, if not the forlorn hope, of liberty ; that in 
her peril and in her utter desolation she was fighting 
the battle for all the rest, — a feeling how well expressed 
in a letter from a town in Connecticut to her select- 
men ! " As Boston has been the first to explain, assert. 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 27 

hold up to public view, stripped of every color and 
disguise, the wicked plans devised against her, her 
glory would have been incomplete had she not been the 
first to suffer in the common cause. We presume not 
to advise. We admire and applaud your constancy." 
Any review, therefore, of the siege of Boston would be 
incomplete which did not recognize the fundamental 
fact that this was one of the decisive events of history. 
The siege of Sebastopol may be forgotten. For, 
although hundreds of thousands were gathered to that 
feast of blood, and courage and skill were lavished 
without stint, nothing final was achieved. But the 
leaguer of New England's capital will not be forgotten ; 
for the half-armed, half-disciplined militia who starved 
out, or intrenched out, the royal army, then and there 
settled that there was to be an America. 

But when did the siege of Boston really commence ? 
Was it in those days succeeding the nineteenth of 
April, when the farmers from all the New England 
States came hurrying seaward, and with no real com- 
mander-in-chief, and with little or no plan of action, 
seated themselves upon the hills, and with military 
instinct began to intrench themselves ? Or was it on 
that third day in July, when under the historic elm at 
Cambridge there stood a man of grand face and form, 
who took command of these irregular levies, and where 
disorder had been introduced method, and reinforced 
rude courage and patriotism with military skill and 
foresight ? It would be far nearer the truth to say that 
the siege began the hour that General Gage landed 
with despotic instructions and almost vice-royal powers. 
For never was he governor in Massachusetts one foot 
beyond the girdle of the flashing bayonets of his 



28 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

soldiers, and within that girdle his subjects were bold 
and defiant, chafing under their yoke, and meeting the 
insults of the soldiery with open resistance. It would 
be far truer to say that the siege began on that first day 
of June, 1774, when the Boston Port Bill closed to 
honest commerce the highways of the sea. For then, 
with the sounds of labor stilled, and the wharves, so 
lately thronged, solitary, the patriots bitterly resolved 
that though the royal navy might rule in Massachusetts 
waters, the royal army should not traverse Massachu- 
setts soil. No visible lines of intrenchment were on 
the low hills which commanded the peninsula; no dark 
bulk of breastwork or bastion frowned down upon it. 
All the same, the beleagucrment was there, unseen but 
latent, ready at the first hostile movement to become 
manifest and impregnable. Like the fabled net of the 
magician, its meshes were so fine that the keenest eye 
could not see them ; so strong that a giant's struggles 
could not break them. 

That extraordinary episode in the early days of 
September ! In what clear light it puts this subject ! 
How evident not only the dauntless determination of 
the patriots, but their instant readiness ! Towards 
evening on the first day of that month, General Gage 
sent by water a small detachment of soldiers to Quarry 
Hill, in Avhat is now Somerville, who brought away 
from the arsenal ^ of the Province two hundred and fifty 

1 The quaint old mill which stands to-day, looking in the dis- 
tance like a gigantic minie-ball, which was built early in the 
eighteenth century, which in 1747 was bought by the Colony for a 
powder-house, and in which the ammunition of Washington's army 
was stored during the siege, is the most genuine and most inter- 
esting Revolutionary relic now in existence near Boston. We can 
only echo the wish of Drake that Somerville may see to it that this 
ancient memorial of the fathers be preserved. 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 29 

half-barrels of powder. Not a large military incident 
surely! Not a wonderful stretch of authority in one 
who was sent out with the express purpose of taming 
rebels ! Yet so inflamed was the public mind, that all 
New England was in a blaze. In twenty-four hours, 
three thousand men were in Cambridge ; in forty-eight, 
the farmers of Hampshire and Berkshire, and the 
forces of Connecticut under "Old Put," were on the 
march; and, had there been need, in less than a week 
more men would have gathered around Boston than 
General Washington commanded. And while this was 
going on, and while this threatening array was collect- 
ing, all that Gage could do was to cower with his 
soldiers under the shadow of the Province House, to 
build fortifications across the Neck, not to help him 
out of Boston, but to protect him in Boston, and to 
despatch piteous letters to the Ministry, begging them 
to send out more regiments. If this was not practically 
a siege, what was it ? 

On the eleventh day of October, 1774, the govern- 
ment of Massachusetts passed forever from British 
hands, for on that day the Provincial Congress met in 
Concord and organized. That which for months, and 
perhaps years, had been a fact, became now a visible 
and palpable finality. With a calm steadiness which 
awakened the admiration of all parties, the new 
authority divested the royal governor, one by one, of 
all his powers and functions. Appointing a receiver- 
general, it took possession of the purse ; organizing a 
committee of safety, it seized the sword; through its 
committee of supplies it became master of all the 
Province and town arsenals and munitions of war; by 
its minute inquiries it may almost be said to have 
counted up every musket and fowling-piece, and 



30 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

weighed every ounce of powder, in the Province. Not 
content with the old militia, it called into existence 
companies and regiments of minute-men who should be 
ready at briefest notice to hurry, armed and equipped, 
to the point of danger. It elected generals and com- 
missaries ; it established military laws and regulations. 
It collected in depots provisions, clothing, tents, and 
military supplies of all sorts; it purchased powder, 
muskets, and cannon, — and all to one end : to keep 
General Gage in Boston, and Massachusetts free of his 
unlawful authority. And so he was fettered and held 
back from action by chains whose strength nobody 
better knew than he. 

The steady courage and preparation of those without, 
producing nearly all the results of an actual siege, is 
noteworthy. The unspeakable audacity of those who, 
in the days of uncertainty and danger which preceded 
formal warfare remained within, is still more remark- 
able. At no time during its occupation could Boston 
have had three thousand able-bodied men in it; and 
these without any organization, and half armed or 
unarmed. And side by side with them was a garrison 
numbering at different periods from five to ten thou- 
sand men, — the best of England's soldiers. Yet the 
citizens yielded nothing. They walked among the red- 
coated gentry with proud step, as men and equals. 
Still, in the Old South Meeting-house, within earshot 
of the Governor's home, they held great gatherings to 
denounce the oppressive measures of King and Parlia- 
ment. They refused to give aid or comfort to the 
intruders. Insults they met with resistance; blows 
with blows; and to such purpose, that Sam Adams 
writes, " In private rencontres I have yet to hear of a 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 31 

single instance of the officers coming o££ other than 
second best." 

What a scene was that which occurred on the anni- 
versary in 1775 of the Boston Massacre ! The time 
was March sixth, nearly midway between Colonel Les- 
lie's ignominious return from North Bridge, Salem, and 
Colonel Smith's bloody retreat from North Bridge, 
Concord; the place, that Old South Meeting-house, 
which we, children of the fathers, would make a place 
of merchandise ; the audience, a town meeting, called 
in defiance of an act of Parliament, and in scorn of 
Parliament's tools. Samuel Adams was there, at heart 
firm as granite, in aspect balmy as a June morning, 
graciously motioning to British officers to occupy the 
best seats. Every pew, every aisle, every niche, was 
crammed with listeners. To such a place, to such an 
audience, at such a time, came Joseph Warren, borne, 
as tradition has it, on account of the dense crowd, 
through a window, and delivered an oration whose pur- 
pose was to denounce the laws of the Parliament and 
the presence of soldiery in the town as inconsistent 
with the rights and liberties of the subject. Could 
bold resolve further go ? 

One other scene ! Massachusetts had appointed dele- 
gates to the Continental Congress. That Congress met 
to weld into a compact unity those scattered elements 
of disaffection and revolt which General Gage had 
come to disperse and destroy. Did these men, bound 
on such an errand, steal quietly away from the presence 
of the British Governor ? The farthest thing from 
that ! Says John Andrews, merchant, selectman, and, 
best of all, trusty annalist, "I am told that the com- 
mittee for Congress made a respectable parade in sight 
of the five regiments encamped on the Common; being 



32 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

in a coach and four, preceded by two white servants 
well mounted and armed, with four blacks in livery, 
two on horseback and two on foot. " 

This same spirit of defiance and self-assertion ran 
through all classes. "The mulish workmen," as an 
enraged British officer terms them, though themselves 
half starved, refused to lift a hand to build barracks to 
shelter the soldiers from the inclemency of a New 
England winter ; and Gage had to send to New York 
and Nova Scotia for the needed carpenters, brick- 
layers, and smiths. At one time private encounters 
between the military and civilians seem to have been 
of daily occurrence. Mr. Andrews reports, "It would 
puzzle any one to purchase a pair of p — Is, as they are 
bought up with a full determination to repel force by 
force." Before us is the record of nigh a score of 
sharp encounters provoked by the military, but met in 
no craven spirit by the people. "What a scene is this 
to happen in what had been once the most peaceable 
and orderly of towns ! Fifteen British officers dined at 
a disorderly house, not it is to be presumed to the 
improvement of their sobriety or decency. They broke 
up in squads. The last five coming out met one Alva 
Hunt, a cooper, walking with his wife, and insulted 
her. " Whereat," we are told, "he aimed a blow at an 
officer's head and laid it open." They then laid about 
with their swords and drove all before them, excepting 
Samuel Jarvis, Samuel Pitts, one Fullerton, and a 
negro fellow, name not given, who got the better of 
them, and took their swords away from them. Tt is to 
the credit of General Gage that he made these shame- 
less debauchees wait on the selectmen and publicly ask 
the pardon of the town. Here is a midnight — we had 
almost said, comedy ! Young Mr. Molineaux — both 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 33 

he and his father seem to have been Sons of Liberty — 
at eleven o'clock at night was seized by two Welsh 
fusileers in the street leading to his father's house. 
He shook them off, ran a few steps, threw off his coat 
and waistcoat, and, turning, assumed an attitude of 
defence, knocking one down, and then the other. He 
continued this lively amusement fifteen minutes, keep- 
ing them in play and all the time crying, " Murther. " 
A lad now appeared on the arena; shortly after, Major 
Small, a British officer who was greatly respected, and 
in Trumbull's picture of the battle of Bunker Hill is 
represented trying to save "Warren's life, put au end 
to the assault by arresting one of the soldiers. A 
third fracas appears to have taken place on a main 
street: a band of British officers, as usual crazy with 
liquor, with swords drawn, rush about, cutting, thrust- 
ing, with entire recklessness. Seeing the Providence 
stage passing, they attack it, break the windows, and 
insult the passengers. But the driver, a bold, active 
fellow, jumped from the seat, seized and beat one of 
them, and apparently put the rest to flight. These 
skirmishes are, perhaps, a little more lively than most 
which are recorded. Still they fairly enough represent 
the stiff resolution with which high and low alike 
refused to submit supinely to any form or act of injus- 
tice and violence. They needed it all ; for while the 
officers of higher rank were disposed to protect the 
citizens, many of the subalterns acted like "a parcel 
of children " ; and the soldiers, who, if we are to 
believe Timothy Newell, "were a set of men whose 
unparalleled wickedness, profanity, debauchery, and 
cruelty were inexpressible," taking their cue from 
them and improving upon their masters, were ready for 
any act of insolence or brutality. 



34 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

On the twentieth of April, 1775, for the first time, 
an army began to gather about Boston. Made up of 
the troops of four Colonies, there was no legitimate 
commander-in-chief, and only by courtesy was General 
Ward received as such. On the seventeenth of June 
the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, and with so little 
military order that nobody to-day can say with cer- 
tainty who commanded, if, indeed, any one man did 
command. On the second of July, General Washington 
arrived. Even at the news of his coming the Provin- 
cial Congress "voted that the proclamation for a fast 
be suspended"; just as in 1630, when a ship-load of 
provisions arrived in the starving colony, straightway 
the day of fasting was made a day of thanksgiving. 
And so the siege pursued its slow course, until that 
bright morn of the seventeenth of March, 1776, when 
the British embarked in their fleet, and dropped 
silently down the bay. 

The siege of Boston was to both the contending 
parties a true school of arms. Nothing is so surprising 
as the number of persons destined to play important 
parts in the war who were present. Not many of the 
great names are missing. Of all the general officers 
employed in the American ranks from 1775 to 1783, 
nearly two thirds were there serving in some capacity. 
Count off the roll of great names. General Washington 
himself had probably never commanded so many as a 
full regiment of soldiers. Perhaps he had never seen 
any other fortifications than the rude log breastworks 
and blockhouses of the Indian frontier. It was not 
because he had exhibited capacity on great fields of 
action that men had faith in him, but because on small 
fields his prudent foresight, his modest decision, and 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 35 

his intrepid valor had shone resplendently amid the 
pretentious diilness and haughty incompetency of other 
men. With him, as second in command, came from his 
vagrant wanderings over half the earth General Charles 
Lee. Lean and wellnigh grotesque in figure, harsh 
and repulsive of countenance, his eccentricity exceeded 
his genius. Heralded as a military prodigy and the 
protecting angel of freedom, he ended a career begun 
in vainglorious boastings in imprisonment for open 
insubordination and treason at Monmouth. The Adju- 
tant General was that other British soldier, Horatio 
Gates. His powers fitted him for a moderate place. 
His vanity led him in the crisis of the Revolution to 
seek to push Washington from his seat, and himself to 
seize the reins. But the laurels worn, not won, at Sara- 
toga, faded forever on his brow at Camden, and a weak 
but probably honest career ended in sad retirement. 
Nathanael Greene led to Roxbury the Rhode Island 
contingent. He was Quaker born and bred, — the son 
of a father who was eminent as a preacher, and equally 
eminent for his shrewd management of a great farm, 
and of a combined grist-mill, saw-mill, and forge. As 
a stripling and young man he earned his livelihood 
toiling at his father's forge. But in his hours of 
leisure he satisfied the cravings of an active and power- 
ful mind with the study of Euclid, Locke on the 
Understanding, and Blackstone's Commentaries. His 
only practical knowledge of war was a brief service as 
private in the Kentish Guards in piping times of peace ; 
and it is no small evidence of the impression which he 
had even then made on his contemporaries, that, in 
preference to so many others who had a larger military 
experience, he was chosen to command the soldiers of 
his native Province. But, sober, thoughtful, sound in 



36 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

judgment, and full of resources, he soon became the 
trusted friend of Washington, and, if any man was, on 
tented field or in council chamber, his peer. To the 
scene of action hurried Israel Putnam, — name dear 
to schoolboys ! Better wolf-hunter and Indian fighter 
than strategist or tactician! But his bold, bluff, 
honest ways have appealed to the imagination, and will 
long keep him a place in memory. Henry Knox was 
there as a volunteer. His studies had been all war- 
like, but his business, that of a bookseller, peaceful 
enough. With prodigious energy he dragged to Cam- 
bridge, in the depth of a New England winter, through 
thinly settled and almost pathless forests, the cannon 
captured at Ticonderoga, and his arrival made Dor 
Chester Heights and the evacuation a possibility. In 
a few months he became the first artillery general of 
America, if not of his times. Who can forget John 
Stark, gaunt, strong, descendant of the tough Scotch- 
Irish race ? At Bunker Hill, by the shore of the 
Mystic, he played his part bravely, and at Bennington 
he won the most brilliant victory of the war, and 
secured Burgoyne's surrender. Benedict Arnold! No 
one can write that name without sadness. He was a 
man without feeling and without principle, but of such 
resolution and of such desperate valor that he seemed 
made for great achievements. Had he been" happy 
enough to have died in the hour of victory at Stillwater, 
he would have left his name in the roll of pure patriots. 
Put in contrast to this brilliant wickedness the solid 
goodness and sound judgment of Benjamin Lincoln, 
who achieved that hardest work, the preservation amid 
misfortune and defeat of the respect and confidence of 
all good men. 

Many of the lesser actors on this narrow arena proved 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 37 

to be men of note. Daniel Morgan, stalwart Virginia 
wagoner, marched a company of riflemen and sharp- 
shooters all the way from his distant home, and startled 
the staid Northern farmers by the unaccustomed uni- 
form of fringed hunting shirts. It was his fortune, 
standing at bay at Cowpens, to put to rout Tarleton's 
famous troopers, and to throw the first gleam of light 
across the darkness and sadness of the Southern cam- 
paign. Major Knowlton, of Connecticut, at Bunker 
Hill, for conduct and valor deserves a place beside 
Prescott. When he died, a few months after, in a 
successful skirmish on Harlem Heights, he won from 
Washington's chary lips the eulogy, " He was one who 
would have done honor to any country. " Recently the 
statue of General John Glover, of Marblehead, has been 
brought to grace the city he helped to save. He was a 
man of diminutive size, but of fiery energy and effi- 
ciency. His amphibious regiment of Essex fishermen 
and sailors was one of the first in the field, and one of 
the best. After the disastrous battle of Long Island, 
they ferried the American army across the East River, 
and saved it from destruction. Five months later they 
only were able to pilot through the swift current and 
broken ice of the Delaware that chosen troop which 
electrified a desponding country by the battle of 
Trenton. Gladly would we run through that long list. 
Heath and Sullivan, Thomas and Spencer, Artemas 
Ward the incorruptible judge, Otho Williams, Rufus 
Putnam the engineer, and John Brooks, one of Massa- 
chusetts' best Governors, — these and more than two- 
score others known and followed on many a battle-field. 
Nor was the British army unrepresented at Boston. 
All three of the commanders in chief, Gage, Howe, 
and Clinton, were there. The versatile Buro-ovne, 



38 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

historian, dramatist, member of Parliament, spoiled 
darling of fashion, brave and unfortunate soldier, came 
thither, by his sprightliness and wit to enliven the 
dreary hours of a monotonous siege. Sir Robert Pigot 
was said to have been the first man who mounted 
Prescott's redoubt in the third and final charge at 
Bunker Hill. He was a good soldier, and in 1778 
successfully defended Rhode Island against General 
Sullivan. Lord Rawdon, who on Hobkirk Hill baffled 
Greene, and who nearly half a century later, as Gover- 
nor General of India, achieved a pure renown, brought 
his skill and steady courage to this trial of arms. In 
the list you must include the name of General Alexander 
Leslie, who by his expedition to Salem appeared in the 
first scene of the first act of the mighty drama of the 
Revolution ; and who, as he surrendered Charleston in 
1782, stood almost the last actor before the curtain 
finally fell. With him was Nisbet Balfour, who in 
1781 at the same Charleston brought a deep stain upon 
an honorable name by the cruel and needless execution 
of Colonel Hayne. 

By far the most striking feature of the siege was the 
presence of these great men in both ranks. At that 
siege especially were the untrained courage and enthu- 
siasm of the patriot soldiers tempered by the discipline, 
by the great privations, and by the constant disappoint- 
ments of a weary leaguer, to a finer skill and endur- 
ance. Could you have annihilated the army around 
Boston and in Boston in the winter of 1775, you would 
have blotted out most of the prominent military names 
of the Revolution, and the larger part of its history. 
Among the events of the siege of Boston let us place 
then, first in time, first in importance, the presence of 
the men who themselves wrought out the Revolution, 
who in a certain very true sense were the Revolution. 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 39 

When we come to consider the special features and 
characteristics of the siege of Boston we shall be sur- 
prised to notice how largely these were predetermined 
by other causes than the courage of the soldiers or the 
skill of the opposing generals. In brief, it may be 
said that the British commander did not dare make the 
campaign one of active hostilities, and that General 
Washington could not. Concord, and Lexington, and 
Bunker Hill stood like so many spectres in the path of 
the royal officers, and took all heroism out of them. 
From unreasonable contempt of their foe, they had 
passed to as unreasonable a respect for him. They 
seemed, indeed, to have cherished something like a 
superstitious dread of this part of the country, and of 
the people who occupied it. General Howe, on assum- 
ing command early in October, writes in this doubtful 
strain to the Earl of Dartmouth: "The opening of a 
campaign from this quarter would be attended with 
great hazard, as well from the strength of the country 
as from the intrenched position which the rebels have 
taken, and from which they could not be forced with- 
out considerable loss on our part; and from the diffi- 
culty of access farther into the country they would have 
every advantage in the defence of it on their side, being 
indefatigable in raising field-works, which they judi- 
ciously suppose must wear us down by repeated onsets, 
whereas they are so numerous in this part of the 
country that they would not feel the loss they might sus- 
tain. " And General Gage, in his last despatch, a few 
weeks earlier, exhibits the same discouragement: "I 
am of an opinion, that no offensive operations can be 
carried on to advantage from Boston. On a supposi- 
tion of a certainty of driving the rebels from their 
intrenchments, no advantage would be gained but repu- 



40 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

tation. Victory could not be improved. The loss of 
men would probably be great, and the rebels be as 
numerous in a few days as before their defeat. Besides, 
the country is remarkably strong, and adapted to their 
way of fighting." Compare these views with those 
expressed in a letter written by a British officer eight 
months before, and you will comprehend the change of 
feeling. "What you hear about the rebels taking up 
arras is mere bullying. Whenever it comes to blows, 
he that can run fastest will think himself best off. 
Believe me, any two regiments here ought to be 
decimated if they did not beat the whole force of 
Massachusetts Province." So at last the British com- 
manders, coming down from their high expectations, 
had settled into the conviction that offensive operations 
in Massachusetts were hopeless. This alone accounts 
for the fact that ten thousand soldiers, the flower of the 
British army, who had confronted with honor the best 
French troops, permitted fifteen thousand raw militia, 
under country captains and colonels, to draw a net of 
intrenchments around them without making an effort 
to break through these toils, — and to do so, when we 
know by American testimony that had they made an 
attack all the American artillery must have been 
silent, and the infantry for want of ammunition could 
not have fought an hour. 

On the other hand, it was impossible for Washington 
to engage in active warfare. He was hampered in 
every way. He had, indeed, an army of green troops, 
full of courage and faith in their cause ; but they were 
not so much soldiers as the material out of which 
soldiers should be made. Gathered from all quarters ; 
often poorly armed; always imperfectly drilled, and 
unaccustomed to act together in a body larger than a 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 41 

company; averse to strict discipline; disposed to feel 
that they had a right to come and go at their own 
pleasure; containing, too, in their ranks, if we are to 
trust Dr. Belknap, some lewd fellows of the baser sort, 
— they made up a body of men of such natural valor 
and intelligence that they could be depended upon to 
do good service in simple skirmishes, or in defence of 
a stronghold, but were not equal to the complicated 
and simultaneous movements by which alone a town 
like Boston could be assaulted with any hope of suc- 
cess. Stringent discipline might and did remedy these 
defects ; but the term of enlistment was so brief that 
the army was perpetually changing, and the work was 
never done. As Washington declared, never before 
had a siege like this been maintained, when one army 
had been disbanded and another recruited within mus- 
ket-shot of two and twenty regiments, the flower of 
the British army. This was the first obstacle. There 
were others still more serious. One month after 
Washington took command he writes that the existence 
of the army depends upon its situation being kept a 
profound secret, for they have only nine rounds of 
powder to a man. For seven long months, far into the 
new year, there was not a day when the Americans 
could hope to make a successful advance, and scarcely 
to defend their lines against a resolute attack, for want 
of that very breath of war, — powder. Not only had 
they no powder to put into their muskets, sometimes 
they had no muskets to put their powder in, so be they 
had it. Once two thousand men stood utterly unarmed. 
As for cannon, not until Knox with incredible labor 
had dragged them from the shores of Lake George, and 
Captain Manly had captured the transport "Nancy," 
filled with every munition which the Americans needed, 



42 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

could there be said to be any proper train of artillery. 
As the bitter winter came on, — and it was bitter, — 
Washington had almost literally to apply to the neigh- 
boring towns, and as it were to beg from house to 
house, for blankets to keep his soldiers from freezing. 
" Most houses can spare one, some of them many, " he 
pleads. As early as November second there was a 
great scarcity of wood. " The soldiers of different regi- 
ments are almost on the point of cutting each other's 
throats for a few standing locusts to dress their victuals 
with." General Greene writes, December thirty- 
first : " We have suffered prodigiously for want of wood ; 
many regiments have been obliged to eat their pro- 
visions raw for want of fuel to cook it." In view of 
this destitution of all things needful for comfort or 
warfare, Washington speaks wellnigh with contempt 
of the complaints that he does not seize commanding 
points. " What signifies Long Island, Point Aldcrton, 
or Dorchester, while we are in a manner destitute of 
cannon, and compelled to keep what little powder we 
have for the use of musketry ? " He could as well have 
seized Dorchester Heights in August and September 
as in March; he had as many men; he could have 
intrenched himself more easily; the enemy were no 
stronger; but he dared not, lest he should bring on 
that general battle which none so well as he knew that 
he was not ready to fight. Despite his daring passage 
of the Delaware at Trenton, amid the ice and tempest 
of a winter's night; despite that resolute attack of 
Howe at Germantown, within less than a month after 
his defeat at Brandywine; despite his flaming wrath at 
the misconduct and retreat of Lee at Monmouth, — it 
has been the fashion to emphasize the title of Ameri- 
can Fabius, as though that described the inmost temper 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 43 

and genius of the man. If we study his first command 
at Boston, we shall comprehend how much of this pru- 
dence was of nature, and how much was taught by the 
stern lessons of necessity. Twice during the siege he 
proposed to a council of generals, what nothing but the 
most fearless and enterprising valor could contemplate, 
to attempt to take the town by assault, — once in 
September by boats, and once in February over the ice. 
It could not be. His own better wisdom must have 
agreed with his officers that it must not be undertaken. 
But the bare proposal shows the natural temper of his 
mind. So, with the whole country flushed with recent 
victory, and full of great expectations, with his own 
impetuous nature chafing at the obstacles, Washington 
had to sit down and patiently plan how to expel the 
enemy by the slowest and least heroic of methods. 

Thus it was predetermined by the conditions of the 
case, that the taking of Boston should have little of the 
pomp and circumstance of war. No tremendous bom- 
bardment, seeming to rend earth and sky ! No des- 
perate assault! No frequent sallies! None of these 
things ! The coil should simply be drawn tighter until 
the enemy yielded or escaped. Very early, strenuous 
efforts were made to prevent supplies of fresh pro- 
visions, fuel, forage, or munitions of war from going 
into the city. The only lively skirmishes which broke 
the dull monotony of the siege were occasioned by the 
expeditions of the Provincials to the islands in the 
harbor, to destroy the hay and drive off the stock, 
which might be of value to the enemy. That on Hog 
and Noddle's Island rose wellnigh to the dignity of a 
battle, for on that occasion the Americans not only 
defeated the troops opposed to them, with heavy loss, 



44 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

but took and burned a schooner, carrying sixteen guns, 
■which was aiding the attack, and all this without the 
loss on their part of a single life. " The Lord mani- 
festly appears on our side," exclaims a pious Bostonian, 
exultingly. Wherever on the coast the English sought 
supplies they met resistance. At Weymouth the whole 
neighborhood rose in a body to drive off the invaders. 
Six transports, looking into Casco Bay for hay and 
provisions, were attacked by whale-boats, and five of 
them taken. The sailors of Machias captured two 
sloops which were sent thither for lumber, and, man- 
ning the prizes, pursued the armed tender which came 
to protect them, and took her also. A ship loaded with 
two thousand barrels of provisions was tolled into the 
Piscataqua River, and became the prize of the fisher- 
men. This was what was going on all along the coast. 
Not content with simple resistance to invasion, soon 
armed ships and schooners — some public, some private 
— push out from every bay and inlet. Howe writes 
that he fears for his provision transports, — with 
reason. Four prizes taken into Boston Bay, two into 
Salem, two into Plymouth Harbor, one to Beverly, one 
to Marblehead, — such are the items of news eagerly 
recorded in diaries, or printed in the little dingy news- 
papers of the period. Even the elements fought against 
the besieged. A great storm in the British Channel 
wrecked as many vessels probably, and destroyed as 
many supplies, as the Americans succeeded in taking. 

These perpetual losses began to tell. As early as 
September fifth Earl Dartmouth writes to Howe : " The 
situation of the troops, cooped up in a town, deprived 
of the comforts and necessaries of life, wasting away 
by disease and desertion faster than we can recruit, 
and no longer objects of terror to the rebels, is truly 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 45 

distressing." No fresh provisions in Boston; most of 
the wounded from Bunker Hill fight dead for want of 
them ; two thousand sick ; twenty to thirty dying daily ; 
the bells not allowed to toll at funerals; soldiers 
deserting by hundreds, — such were the tales brought 
by citizens who escaped, or by deserters who stole into 
camp, or briefly recorded in journals. In December an 
officer writes: "The distress of the inhabitants and 
troops is beyond all possible power of description. No 
fuel, no vegetables, pulse, or flour ; only salt meat, and 
that fifteen pence a pound." Plainly, war was taking 
on the aspect of privation. 

The sufferings of the inhabitants must have been 
still more severe. But with a kind of grim humor one 
of them records that the flesh of an old bull sold for 
one shilling a pound; and Selectman Newell enters in 
his journal, " Very trying scenes ! This day was 
invited by two gentlemen to dine on rats. " One would 
think so, especially if the invitation was accepted. 
But underneath the grim humor, what grimmer sorrows 
and privations ! What a spectacle, when, just before 
the siege closed in upon the city, thousands of men, 
women, and children, without food, without resources, 
leaving behind their homes, some in wagons, some on 
foot, wended their weary way over Boston Neck, like 
tlie patriarch, not knowing whither they went! Who 
shall paint the hardships of those who remained, where 
the poor could find no work, where the rich could 
collect none of their dues, where all were exposed to 
the open scorn of the refugee Tories, and to the brutal 
insults of a licentious soldiery ? What a piteous sight, 
when, with the coming of winter, seven hundred poor 
souls, many of them aged, thinly clad, pale with past 
endurance, were thrust out upon the bleak exposure of 



46 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

Point Shirley ! Nobody would compare for extremity 
of suffering the siege of Boston with many another 
leaguer. For, after all, Generals Gage and Howe were 
simply kindly gentlemen sent on an unkindly errand. 
But what with the hated yoke of martial law galling 
free necks, and the cruel separation of families caused 
by the sudden closing up of the town, and the real 
destitution and disease, there was enough to blanch 
ruddy cheeks, and bow to an untimely grave vigorous 
forms. The winter wore on, with less and less priva- 
tion, perhaps, to the soldiers, as one and another trans- 
port succeeded in reaching port; with more privation 
to the inhabitants, who had no part in the good fortune, 
and whose resources were steadily decreasing. Some- 
times, however, stern war smoothed its wrinkled front; 
notably, when old Putnam appeared on the scene in the 
new character of a lady's man, and regretting to learn 
that Mrs. Gage's board is furnished only with salt 
beef, politely sends her a quarter of veal to vary her 
diet. A very acceptable gift, we are told, for which a 
polite card of thanks was sent back. 

Meanwhile in the American camp the most pressing 
wants had been supplied by the zeal of the neighboring 
towns. Officers were slowly learning their duty ; disci- 
pline was growing more firm and steady, and the whole 
army was settling down into the habits of military life. 
Every hill and projecting point from the Mystic River 
to Dorchester Neck had been made impregnable, 
stretching around Boston in a vast semicircle of 
redoubts and breastworks of fifteen or twenty miles 
in length, until at last — Knox's precious convoy of 
cannon and mortar arrived, the almost priceless stores 
of Manly's fortunate capture transported to camp, and 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 47 

a moderate supply of powder gathered up — the decisive 
step was taken. One moonlight, hazy night, while all 
along the line the artillery thundered to drown the 
noise of the movement, three thousand men, and three 
hundred ox-carts laden with bales of pressed hay, 
quietly stole across Dorchester Neck, and climbed the 
steep heights. All night, while the enemy slept, they 
labored. Howe woke to find the town, the harbor, the 
fleet commanded by his adversary's guns. A few futile 
plans of attack, a few days of uncertainty, and then a 
hurried embarkation, and the siege which had made so 
little noise and accomplished so much was over. 

The occupation of Dorchester Heights came to Howe 
like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Evidently he 
had no fears about this vital point, either because long 
immunity had lulled him to false security, or because 
he felt that he could at will sweep Dorchester Neck 
with his artillery and prevent its passage. He assured 
the Ministry that he could hold Boston against all 
comers. To the British officers it was a disagreeable 
surprise. They were now comfortably settled in bar- 
racks or deserted houses. Eight store-ships from 
England had reached port in December, and many 
others from the coast. Fuel, fresh provisions, and 
other comforts were plenty. They had turned the 
Cradle of Liberty into a theatre. Plays, balls, mas- 
querades, and grand dinners at the hospitable board of 
General Howe, were all down in the bill of fare. It 
was hard to give it up, and at such short notice. Only 
the day before a lively officer writes: "For the last six 
weeks or two months we have been better amused than 
could possibly be expected." On the morning of the 
fifth, he rubs his eyes, and takes in the full meaning of 



48 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

those low hillocks, and exclaims, "Adieu, balls and 
masquerades ! " Twelve days more, on board a ship 
riding at anchor in Nantasket Roads, he lugubriously 
records: "Sail to-morrow to Halifax, a cursed cold, 
wintry place, — nothing to eat, less to drink. " To the 
Tories it was the knell of doom. One cannot but pity 
them. Often they were gentlemen of high culture, 
thoroughly honest, with loyalty to their king almost a 
religious sentiment. They left behind stately mansions 
and pleasant farms, to linger, perhaps, in loneliness 
and poverty in strange lands. 

It did not take Howe long to decide, that bright 
March morning, that the new works must be stormed, 
or he leave. He accepted the first alternative. Lord 
Percy, with twenty-four hundred men, dropped down 
the harbor to Castle Island, with orders to make the 
attack at evening. The British soldiers, remembering 
that bloody June day, muttered, "It will be another 
Bunker Hill, or worse." Washington reminded his 
soldiers that it was the anniversary of the Boston 
Massacre. But it was to be a war not of man, but of 
the elements. That afternoon a storm lashed to fury 
the waters of the bay, and when it ceased the Americans 
had made their works too strong to be assaulted. But 
to go was as difficult as to stay. The transports were 
too few, and every one of them was at the mercy of the 
enemy. But through the intervention of the selectmen 
there was an unacknowledged but real truce. Washing- 
ton was glad to save the city from flames, and to spare 
his soldiers' blood. Howe was ready to escape on any 
terms. 

All was now hurry and confusion. What to take, 
what to leave, was the question. The ships were 
loaded with little order or method. Cannon were 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 49 

spiked, or their trunnions broken; carriages, pack- 
saddles, and every imaginable article, dropped into the 
docks. On the tenth of March Howe ordered all linen 
and woollen goods — articles in great request among 
the rebels — to be conveyed on board the Minerva at 
Hubbard's Wharf, and delivered to Crean Bush, Esq. 
This was in obedience to the direct command of Lord 
Germain. But it introduced a new element of disorder, 
for Crean Bush, a miserable New York Tory, magnified 
his office, and went from store to store, breaking them 
open, and searching for the required articles. Now 
all restraint was thrown off. Sailors, soldiers, and 
especially the imported carpenters, on the thirteenth 
ranged the streets, axes in hand, insulting peaceable 
folks, breaking into warehouses, and throwing into the 
river and docks vast quantities of sugar, salt, flour, 
and the like, and making the town the scene of tumult 
and riot. 

Howe still lingered. It is said that the wind was 
unfavorable; but Washington summarily ended the 
'delay. On the night of the sixteenth, he took posses- 
sion of Nooks Hill, a little rise of land which must 
have been near the South Boston end of the present 
Dover Street bridge. From thence the Neck and the 
intrenchments could be swept and searched. Howe 
embarked Avith precipitation, and by ten o'clock on the 
morning of the seventeenth he and all his troops, and 
more than a thousand refugees, were on the way down 
the harbor. There were watchers on the hills, and 
almost before the British left the wharves. Colonel 
Ebenezer Learned threw open the gates of the forts on 
the Neck, and entered with five hundred men. Nearly 
simultaneously Israel Putnam, with a detachment, 
crossed the water from Cambridge, and landed at the 



50 SIEGE AKD EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

foot of the Common. The evacuation was complete. 
The enemy in his hurry left behind a vast amount of 
stores. Twenty-one vessels, mostly scuttled, two hun- 
dred and fifty cannon, five or six thousand blankets, 
many thousands of bushels of grain, and some thou- 
sands of tons of coal, are among the things enumerated. 
He scattered the Neck with crow's-feet to retard the 
progress of troops. This recalls a fact, to which allu- 
sion has not often, if ever, been made: that these two 
thousand croAv's-feet were ordered by Gage very early 
in the siege, as though he anticipated the catastrophe 
from the beginning. 

Washington quietly visited the city on the next day, 
and, returning to Cambridge, wrote to Hancock and 
several others an account of the final hours of the siege. 
The same day he despatched a large force, under 
Heath, to New York. On the twentieth, the city 
having been thoroughly cleansed, he marched in with 
the troops. The doors and windows were thrown open, 
and the liberated people expressed their lively joy and 
gratitude. But one observer notes that a melancholy 
gloom hung on their faces. Another, that " by means 
of the hard and savage treatment of the British 
soldiery," and the want of comforts and many necessa- 
ries, "they were become thin, and their flesh wasted." 
There is a pleasant tradition that Mrs. Washington 
rode in a carriage, and that at one point of the route a 
babe born on Evacuation Day was brought out and 
placed in her lap. Washington remained a fortnight 
longer.' We have no full account of his doings. He re- 
ceived the thanks of town, State, and Congress. Much 
of his time must have been given to strengthening the 
city against any return of the enemy, who still remained 
in the bay. On the twenty-eighth, with citizens and 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 51 

officers, he attended a solemn service of thanksgiving. 
One recalls involuntarily that other siege, when liber- 
ated Leyden — burghers, women, children, soldiers, 
sailors, with stout Admiral Boisot at the head — went 
up to the great church to lift to high Heaven their 
offering of gra,titude. It is agreeable to recall that 
John Andrews, to whom we owe such a clear and lively 
account of Boston in 1774-75, had the pleasure, at 
an hour's notice, of entertaining General Washington 
and lady, together with General Gates and others, at 
his mansion in School Street. On the fourth of April, 
Washington, after an early dinner, started for New 
York. One more incident, with a genuine New Eng- 
land flavor: on the twenty -ninth of March, the whole 
British fleet still in the bay, the crow's-feet hardly 
collected out of the streets, a town meeting was held in 
the Old Brick Meeting-house, and town officers chosen. 
So soon had all come back into the old ways again. 

We have the testimony of Washington, that, though 
the town was much damaged, and many houses despoiled 
of furniture, it was much less injured than he expected. 
Even the home of that arch-rebel John Hancock was in 
tolerable order, and all the family pictures left un- 
touched. Other witnesses say that the town was in 
dreadful condition : houses laid waste and filthy ; 
some only heaps of ruins ; fences and trees alike 
destroyed " by these sons of Belial. " The accounts 
are perfectly reconcilable. Now that the lapse of a 
century has softened bitterness, we can afford to 
acknowledge that Gage and Howe had no disposition 
to increase the necessary horrors of war. That they 
permitted the Old South Church to be used for a riding 
school, and the Old North and a hundred dwellings to 



52 SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 

be torn down for fuel, does not prove any special hard- 
ness. They could hardly be expected to cherish any 
great reverence for that house of worship where Adams 
and Warren had thundered in the ears of the people 
their denunciations of the King and his creatures ; and 
it was too much to ask of human nature, when troops 
were "starving from cold," to keep hands off from 
empty wooden buildings, of whatever name. But the 
commanders were poorly seconded by their officers. 
These, for his supposed tenderness to citizens, called 
Gage " the old woman. " As a result of this contra- 
riety of feeling, there was a general preservation of the 
town, accompanied by much special and disgraceful 
mutilation of it. 

You may ask, now, What did the siege of Boston 
accomplish ? When the British sailed out of Massa- 
chusetts Bay they admitted at any rate that the crush- 
ing of the revolt in the four Puritan States was 
impracticable. A ghastly admission one would think. 
The siege of Boston took the American struggle out of 
the range of local warfare up to the level of a national 
revolution. The nineteenth of April told the unwel- 
come truth that our fathers could fight after the fashion 
the forest and the Indian had taught them. The seven- 
teenth of June proved that on occasions behind breast- 
works they would face boldly the determined assaults 
of veterans. To discerning minds, these conflicts had 
revealed far more, — that whatever the peril in the 
coming days, the Colonies would stand shoulder to 
shoulder. Still, eyes which did not wish to see saw 
in these preliminary encounters only the rashness of 
an angry neighborhood. At most, they believed that 
only the bordering States would join in the daring 



SIEGE AND EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 53 

treason. The siege of Boston swept away such illu- 
sions. That was a great act of war, achieved in the 
face of vast obstacles by the combined efforts of all. 
Long before its close all doubts had passed away. 
Henceforth the Colonies, from Canada to the Gulf, 
would present one united front, and throb with one 
common feeling. The world saw that a new nation 
was born. As Howe embarked on the morning of 
Evacuation Day, that glorious success in the first great 
and prolonged trial of arms had made the Declaration 
of Independence, and our recognition as a people by 
the nations, near and certain events. 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

Printed in the Unitarian Review, November, 1877. 

NO part of the war for American independence has 
in it more elements of real or of visible interest 
than what may be termed the flux and reflux of the Rev- 
olutionary invasion of Canada. From that gray dawn in 
May, 1775, when Ethan Allen, in the name of the great 
Jehovah and the Continental Congress, compelled the 
British colonel to surrender the strong fortress of 
Northern New York, to that bright October day in 
1777, when Burgoyne closed a campaign, begun with 
proud expectations and brilliant successes, with a pain- 
ful surrender, — from Ticonderoga to Saratoga, — the 
American colonists and the British government were 
engaged in a continuous struggle for mastery in the 
then almost uninhabited border land between Canada 
and Northern New York and New England. The hope 
of the Bostonians, as the Canadian peasants styled 
the rebels, was to add to the thirteen Colonics all the 
recent conquests from France, and so to leave King 
George, on the whole North American continent, no 
foothold and no base for hostile operations. The pur- 
pose of the English was to obtain full control of that 
remarkable chain of waters which stretches from the 
St. Lawrence to New York harbor, and thus to cut off 
from the confederacy the head and heart of the rebel- 
lion, — Puritan New England. 

It is simply impossible to narrate here, even in the 
most concise manner, the events of three campaigns, 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 55 

crowded with striking incidents, in which successes 
and reverses succeeded each other with wonderful 
rapidity, and at the end of which the war died ahnost 
within a day's march of the spot of its audacious birth. 
As the surveyor, planting at intervals a stake or flag, 
marks to an observing eye his course, so we, recalling 
here and there a few governing facts, can dimly outline 
the great story. March 29, 1775, John Brown, of 
Pittsfield, secret agent at Montreal of the Provincial 
Congress of Massachusetts, writes to Samuel Adams 
and Joseph Warren : " One thing I must mention as a 
profound secret. The fort at Ticonderoga must be 
seized as soon as possible. Should hostilities be com- 
menced by the King's troops, the people of the New 
Hampshire Grants have engaged to do the business, 
and, in my opinion, are the most proper persons for 
the job." This agreement of the people of the New 
Hampshire Grants could hardly have been made much 
later than the middle or last of February. Two months 
before the British had committed open violence, two 
months before the blood of Lexington or the fight at 
Concord, these stalwart farmers of a sparsely settled 
Province, which w^as even then struggling for its own 
political existence, pledged themselves to a great act 
of war. With this bold, may we not say mad agree- 
ment, the annals of the invasion of Canada commence. 
May 10 and 12, 1775, as all the world knows, Ethan 
Allen, with eighty-three men, and Seth Warner, with 
a still smaller following, surprised Ticonderoga and 
Crown Point, — those keys of Canada, as Allen called 
them. Eight days after, Benedict Arnold, in a small 
armed schooner, swept before the south wind up to the 
gates of St. John, took one vessel, burnt many more, 
and obtained full control of the waters of Lake Cham- 



56 FEOM TICONDEEOGA TO SARATOGA. 

plain. September 4, after what proved to be, on the 
part of the Continental Congress, a fatal period of two 
and a half months of timidity and irresolution, Mont- 
gomery, with a small army, was at the mouth of the 
Sorel. Six weeks later he had taken Chambly. An- 
other fortnight, and St. John, with two thirds of all 
the regular soldiers in Canada, was in his possession. 
And on the 12th of November, by his unopposed 
entrance into Montreal, he became real master of the 
whole Province, with the notable exception of the one 
stronghold, Quebec. So swiftly had the first wave 
rolled on and up. 

But this was the climax of the invasion. A sharp 
struggle, a slow decadence, and total and disastrous 
failure followed. For, on the 31st day of December, 
in the last fading hours of the year, amid a driving 
snow-storm, Montgomery, with a few hundred soldiers, 
joined Arnold, fresh from his amphibious march through 
the wildernesses of the Kennebec and the Chaudiere, 
and made a desperate, and, as it now looks, what might 
have been, had fortune granted one smile, a successful 
attack upon Quebec. Bloodily repulsed, for full four 
weary, bitter months the American army kept up the 
appearance of resolution and military strength. But 
behind the appearance was utter exhaustion and dis- 
couragement. Montgomery dead, Arnold wounded, 
the small-pox depleting faster than whole new regi- 
ments could recruit, this shadow of an army held 
little more than the ground on which it encamped. 
Then General Carleton, the British commander, heavily 
reinforced, assumed the offensive ; and on the 6th day 
of May, 1776, — the very day which completed the year 
since the Green Mountain boys gathered at Castleton 
to fulfil their agreement with Major Brown, — the 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 57 

hazardous retreat began. Back first to Three Rivers ; 
then to the mouth of the Sorel; and, hastened by 
defeat, still more swiftly to St. John; until, in the 
early days of July, five thousand wretched men, ragged, 
half starved, poorly sheltered, three thousand of them 
sick, scores of them every day dropping into their 
graves, the remnant of more than ten thousand who 
had joined in this bold venture were huddled around 
Crown Point. Not an American soldier remained in 
arms in Canada. 

The stroke had been given, and failed. What luck 
should attend the countcrstroke was now to be deter- 
mined. Carleton, with his fresh, disciplined bands, 
had easily swept from before him what was but the 
semblance of an army. But when he came to the 
shores of the lake, so aptly called by the Indians 
" the gate of the country, " he found that gate shut and 
barred. Confronting him was General Arnold, with 
a fleet of sixteen or seventeen vessels. That those 
vessels were hastily built and ill adapted to the pur- 
poses of war, — that they were armed with cannon of 
light calibre, and manned chiefly by landsmen, — all 
this is true ; but for the time being they made Arnold 
master of the situation. The American army, all 
along the line of its retreat, had seized and carried 
away, or else burned, every ship, every bateau, and 
every canoe even, which it could find; and when the 
British commander reached the lake, he had neither 
naval force to meet his adversary, nor fleet of boats to 
transport his troops. That he displayed foresight and 
energy must be admitted. Four ships of war which 
had been sent from England, were taken apart at 
Chambly, carried around the rapids of the Sorel, and 
put together again at St. John. Ten gunboats from 



58 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

the same source were added ; ten more were built or 
gathered on the spot; and, to complete their equipment, 
seven hundred veteran sailors were collected. Mean- 
while, to utilize this naval superiority, five or six 
hundred boats had been constructed, and ten thousand 
soldiers stood ready to embark and follow in the wake 
of the victorious fleet. 

But during these preparations the summer had slipped 
away, and there was no time to reap the harvest. On 
the 11th of October, indeed, Carleton defeated the 
American fleet off Valcour Island, in an engagement 
in which the vanquished, fighting against odds, won 
more glory than the victor, and then in proud array 
sailed down the lake and took possession of the deserted 
fortress and the little peninsula of Crown Point. All 
that remained to the Americans of the wide conquests 
of the last seventeen months was the solitary stronghold 
of Ticonderoga. But the campaign was over. Prepa- 
rations were too incomplete and winter too near for 
the victorious army to plunge into new and unknown 
dangers. Amid the dark memories of his selfish greed 
and base treachery let this bright record remain : that 
Arnold's presence in Lake Champlain alone saved New 
York and saved the confederacy, stunned by the great 
and unexpected reverse of Long Island, from a peril 
which they were not prepared to meet. 

Early in June, 1777, Burgoyne, who had superseded 
Carleton, was on the way southward as he supposed 
to easy victory. He had a compact little army of eight 
thousand men, made up of German and English veterans. 
Its equipments were perfect, and it had a park of artil- 
lery of an excellence and strength before unknown in 
this hemisphere. Many of its officers, for valor and skill, 
had already achieved a European reputation. Burgoyne 



FROM TICONDEEOGA TO SARATOGA. 59 

found the road open before him, as his predecessor had 
left it. On the 20th he was at the mouth of the river 
Bouquet, endeavoring to teach his wild Iroquois allies 
how to fight after a kindly and civilized fashion. On 
the 23d his advance was at Crown Point. The night 
of the 4th of July, — ominous celebration of the first 
anniversary of Independence Day ! — General Phillips 
was pressing his troops and cannon up Sugar Hill with 
that same vehemence, as another says, with which he 
broke fifteen canes urging forward his artillery at the 
battle of Minden. The next morning, a British subal- 
tern, looking six hundred feet down the rugged slope, 
saw through his glass the countenances of the Ameri- 
cans, no doubt with fear and perplexity stamped upon 
them. Burgoyne had only confirmed what Trumbull 
had long before proved : that if Ticonderoga locked the 
entrances of Lake George and South Bay, that little 
abrupt cone, less than a third of a mile southward, was 
a sure key to unlock them. Two days later General 
Frazer and Baron Riedesel pursued, and, after an ob- 
stinate resistance, defeated the American rear-guard at 
Hubbardton. No language can describe the consterna- 
tion which seized the humble homes which were thinly 
scattered along the Northern Hudson. The presence 
of British soldiers was sufficiently alarming; but to 
the imagination of that day the Hessian was the type 
of diabolical cruelty ; while the dread of the painted 
Indian added the last element of terror. Everybody fled. 
Ox-carts, wagons, men on horseback, women on pillions, 
mothers dragging themselves along under the burden of 
one or two children, were familiar sights in the narrow 
wood-paths which were the only roads of that day. 

To the British it had been not so much a campaign 
as a pleasure trip, so smoothly all things had moved. 



60 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

Their noble host sailing peacefully in long lines 
down Champlain, a grand pageant ; strong forts open- 
ing their gates at the terror of their name; beauti- 
ful Lake George, set in New York's dark and bloody 
ground, every foot of whose shores had its tale of 
bold foray, of fierce skirmish, or of desperate battle, 
lying unresisting at their feet, and seeming to in- 
vite them to embark upon its waters, — what was all 
this but to play war ? No wonder Burgoyne dreamed 
that in a few brief weeks, victorious, he should 
meet Howe midway on the Hudson, and with him 
exchange congratulations. But, in truth, his troubles 
had just begun. No supplies to be had short of the St. 
Lawrence; the dark wilderness before him cut and 
slashed by the provident order of Schuyler, until its 
few paths were a maze of locking and interlocking 
trunks, such as a tornado, crashing through the forest, 
leaves along its track, — he was brought to a fatal 
pause of six weeks. Each moment of it was like a 
gift of pure gold to his adversaries, enabling them to 
recover courage and to collect resources. Besides, 
acting by detachments which, as Washingon with clear 
sagacity foresaw, could not amid those dense forests be 
properly supported, Burgoyne risked terrible disasters. 
In a single week in August, John Stark, at Bennington, 
lopped off the left arm of his strength ; while Arnold, 
at Fort Stanwix, putting idle panic into the minds of 
St. Leger and his forces, paralyzed the right arm. The 
maimed body groped blindly on to receive, four weeks 
later at Bemus's Heights, a mortal blow. Such, in 
brief, is the outline of three momentous campaigns 
which, on the one hand, secured the independence of 
the Colonies, and, on the other hand, for one hundred 
years at least, bound the Canadian Provinces to Great 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 61 

Britain in willing fealty; and if daring partisan 
exploits, striking military achievements, perpetual 
change of scene as perpetual change of fortunes, and 
the presence of great and noble men on the field of 
action, furnish materials for interest, then no part of 
the Revolutionary struggle is more attractive, or better 
repays study. 

One of the attractions of this series of operations is, 
that it is possible to view them as making up a living 
and varied monograph, complete in itself, and, in 
fancy at any rate, separated from every other chapter 
of our history. Of course it is not really so. Deeply 
considered, these events are bound to all contemporary 
ones by ties which cannot be severed. You read 
Washington's letters, and you see how, with his own 
great load to carry, every hour he bore in his heart the 
needs of this Northern struggle, and, to insure its 
success, contributed from his enfeebled army his best 
soldiers. You study the records of the Continental 
Congress, and how evident it is that, when its members 
had, with reluctance, accepted the hostile movement, 
they gave for its furtherance their counsels, their 
labors, and, alas! too often their personal piques and 
sectional jealousies. And when the crowning mercy 
came, it was not alone New York or New England 
which received the blessing, but the farthest State of 
the confederacy just as much, which from that hour 
felt its shackles grow loose and brittle. So, in truth, 
these campaigns were but part and parcel of all the 
rest of the uncertain struggle. 

But it is not natural to feel acutely this connection. 
The field of action was so distant in space and so 
different in character, and the strategy so independent 



62 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

of other movements, that, as you read, you hardly 
recall parallel events. Following Montgomery in his 
victorious advance to Montreal, or watching Arnold 
struggling around the rapids and over the portages and 
through the shallow and choked lakes which lie hetween 
Norridgewock and Quebec, who remembers that at that 
very time Washington, lacking ammunition, lacking 
guns, lacking food, lacking fuel, lacking men, lacking 
everything, strong only in the ignorance of the enemy 
and in the fears which Concord and Bunker Hill had 
created, was overlooking beleaguered Boston ? Or, as 
we hold our breath that we may catch every one of the 
features of the heroic struggle on that 31st of December 
upon the heights of Quebec, do we recall that in those 
very hours our great commander at Cambridge was 
wearily watching, with fears in his heart, more than 
half his army, at the close of their time of enlistment, 
march away from camp, leaving it almost naked and 
defenceless against its foes ? To how large a portion 
of intelligent readers is it perfectly clear that the 
retreat of the American army from Canada and Howe's 
advance on New York were contemporary movements ? 
That, when one British fleet was driving along the 
waters of Lake Champlain the shattered remnant of 
Arnold's ships, another British fleet, having broken 
through the obstructions at Fort Washington, was 
dominating all the broad reaches of the Hudson ? 
That in the same months, and almost in the same 
weeks, when Gates was jauntily reaping at Stillwater 
and Saratoga the fruits of Schuyler's foresight, his 
great chief, whose place he dared hope to fill, was 
wrestling against odds at Brandywine and German- 
town? These events do run parallel ; and doubtless 
they cast light and shade upon each other, and mutually 



FROM TICONDEHOGA TO SARATOGA. 63 

act and react. But few carry in memory the connec- 
tion. This apparent isolation of the Northern cam- 
paigns has its advantages. It certainly gives dramatic 
unity to the narrative; and it enables the mind, less 
burdened by multiplicity of interests and events, better 
to comprehend the field of action, the men, the move- 
ments, and the results. 

And, first of all, we need to fix our attention upon 
the field of action; for this, perhaps, more than the 
foresight of administrators, and more than the skill of 
generals and the valor of soldiers, determined the 
fortunes of these Northern campaigns. It is almost 
impossible to appreciate the physical conditions of 
this region of country barely one hundred years ago. 
Draw a straight line, nearly east and west, from the 
boundary of New York and Vermont, through Saratoga, 
till it touches Lake Ontario at Oswego. Here is a 
tract larger than Vermont. More than six hundred 
thousand people live on it, and still it is not crowded. 
In 1777 there were scarcely twice as many hundreds. 
The map of the period writes across this tract, " Unsiir- 
veyed. " You travel up and down the shores of Lake 
Champlain on either side; you find at every step pros- 
perous towns and villages. But when Burgoyne sailed 
up that lake there were not fifty people on the west 
shore from Crown Point to Canada; and on the eastern 
sliore, barely a half dozen or so of hamlets of a few log 
huts each. Lake George was a gem in an absolute 
wilderness, — an unbroken wood clothing its surround- 
ing hills and touching its waters on all sides, except at 
a little fifty-acre clearing at Sabba' Day Point. In 
short, from the Connecticut to Lake Ontario there was 
one boundless forest, with scarcely the smoke of a 
white man's cabin rising from it, made rugged by steep 



64 FEOM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

mountains and innumerable hills, and cut through on 
every side by swift-rushing streams. For a brief 
period, while the French held Crown Point and Ticon- 
deroga, near to them one or two little villages, of 
perhaps fifteen hundred people, had sprung up. But at 
the close of the last French war they were deserted; 
and to-day the curious inquirer finds the old cellar 
holes, some of them amidst dense woods, which have 
grown up where life and joy once were. These vast 
solitudes had been the neutral ground and the battle- 
field for unknown periods; first, between the Six 
Nations and their savage foes in Canada; afterwards, 
between the British and French. In this ocean of 
verdure there were no roads, only narrow trails passable 
but to the feet of Indian scouts. So terrible was this 
wilderness, that Sir John Johnson, when in 1775 he 
fled from his baronial hall on the Mohawk to Canada, 
though his steps were directed by the best of Indian 
guides, was nineteen suffering days traversing perhaps 
two hundred miles, and reached Montreal in what is 
recorded as "a pitiable condition." Even the country 
south of this wilderness is spoken of as dark and fear- 
ful, full of dangerous defiles, and broken by morasses 
and easily made impenetrable. A journey of Mrs. 
Schuyler, from Albany to Ticonderoga, to see her sick 
husband, is described as fatiguing and exposing to the 
last degree ; and Dr. Franklin, proposing to ride over 
the best road in the Province, from Albany to New 
York, with the most careful of drivers, and in the 
softest coach good Madam Schuyler could furnish, 
jocosely suggested the propriety of making his will 
before he started. 

If now you turned your eye eastward, toward Maine, 
vou would find similar conditions, or worse. After 



TEOM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 65 

you passed the narrow strip of civilization which 
hugged the mouths of the rivers and the Atlantic, you 
were face to face with primeval solitudes. Woods, 
slippery with fallen trunks, and dense with moss and 
undergrowth; rivers, continually broken by rapids; 
ponds choked with the decay and fall of vegetation for 
untold ages, — were everywhere. Even in Canada it 
was hardly better. Montreal was a little town of five 
thousand people; St. John, hardly more than a mili- 
tary post; Three Rivers, a village of perhaps a thou- 
sand. General Riedesel, passing through, says the 
country around the St. Lawrence and the Sorel was 
pretty, but utterly incapable of sustaining the army. 
These are not simply interesting reminiscences. Nature 
dominated in military affairs, and largely determined 
results. We recall a few instances. For six weeks 
Arnold struggled with incredible perseverance through 
the Maine forests. Had he been able to reach Quebec 
only three days earlier, he would certainly have taken 
it, and perhaps made Canada the fourteenth State in 
the Union. When Carleton reached Champlain with a 
noble army, a little fleet, not half so powerful as any 
petty fishing town on our coast could equip with a 
month's notice, was amply strong to bar his progress 
and ruin his campaign. And when on that same lake 
Burgoyne had undisputed command, a little strip of 
wilderness before him, and a long thin line of commu- 
nication behind him, made advance to the Hudson for 
six weeks dangerous, if not impossible. Even then he 
did not sufficiently respect the perils of the wilderness. 
His instructions to Baum, when one thinks what the 
ways over the Green Hills must have been, ordering 
him to cross and recross Vermont, and bring back 
hundreds of cattle for food, and hundreds of horses to 



66 FROxM TICOXDEROGA TO SxVRATOGA. 

mount liis cavalry, read like the ravings of a madman 
rather than the instructions of a prudent general. And 
when he himself had reached the Hudson, and for 
whole weeks was so near the enemy's camp that he 
could hear his reveille, and had fought on the interven- 
ing ground two pitched battles, he was ignorant both of 
the position and strength of Gates's army; and it was 
not until after his surrender that he learned anything 
worth knowing. Stranger yet, when, September 18th, 
Major Brown attacked his communications and burned 
hundreds of boats and took hundreds of prisoners, it 
was not from his rear-guard and it was not from his 
scouts that he learned of this fresh disaster, but, ten 
days after, from a German cornet whom Gates released, 
and who brought to the British commander news which 
in the rebel camp was three or four days old. So 
clearly and vividly do all the circumstances of these 
campaigns prove that the Americans had no allies so 
sure as the strength of the hills and the wide solitudes 
of the forests. 

The material of the opposing armies furnishes another 
interesting subject of inquiry. Of the American force, 
the bulk must have been New Englanders. Of them 
we have graphic sketches, drawn not always by friendly 
hands. They were the farthest possible remove from 
the traditional soldier. Coming out of the heart of 
society and life thoroughly democratic, they had no 
respect for titles. To them a captain or colonel was a 
fellow townsman with an epaulet added. The officers 
often shared their opinion, and preserved too littie 
dignity. Thacher relates an amusing instance. A 
certain Massachusetts colonel, " a serious and good 
man," permitted his son to set up a cobbler's bench, 
and, in intervals of military duty, to pursue his trade 



FEOM TICOXDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 67 

at his quarters. The officers of Wayne's regiment were 
disgusted. At first they only sneered; but one day 
one of their number, warmed witli wine, entered the 
colonel's room, threw the bench out of the window, 
assaulted the colonel himself, and set the camp in an 
uproar. If we can trust Southern reporters, the New 
England military apparel was not, at its best, impres- 
sive. Here a dingy suit of old French war regimentals 
contrasted oddly with the homespun at its side. A 
battered cocked hat was sometimes added, while a 
motley array of rifles, fowling-pieces, and carbines com- 
pleted the un-uniform uniforms. At Saratoga, even 
so much as this was not attempted, the rank and file 
appearing in ordinary farmer's garb, and the officers 
having little to distinguish them but different colored 
cockades. Their ideas of camp duty were the crudest. 
Schuyler reports that, when he came to Ticonderoga, 
the first sentinel he met left his post and went back 
to wake the guard; that the second suffered him to 
approach without opposition, and that with a penknife 
he could have overcome both and set fire to the block- 
house. They carried into war the traditions of the 
town meeting, and seemed to believe that there too 
the majority should rule ; so that poor Montgomery was 
actually forced by the clamor of his soldiers to encamp 
on that side of St. John wdiich his own judgment held 
to be both less safe and less healthy. Add now that 
they were civilians more than soldiers, liable to fits of 
homesickness, a disease for which, as an officer said, 
there was no remedy but a discharge, and one begins to 
see why strange reverses so often followed as strange 
successes, and why the defeats of the Canadian army 
were not half so bad as its dissensions and divisions 
and utter lack of sound discipline. Yet it was out of 



68 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

just such material that a few months' real campaigning 
made splendid regiments, like that which, under General " 
John Brooks, threw itself with headlong fury against 
Brajman's redoubt, and killed or drove out its de- 
fenders, and turned the 7th of October's fight into a 
ruinous disaster for Burgoyne. It was just such as 
they — men almost without discipline — who performed 
at Bennington the unheard of achievement of raw 
militia storming intrenchments held by veterans and 
defended by artillery. 

It was in these campaigns that the New England 
farmers, so democratic in their feelings and so homely 
in their ways, first came into contact with the soldiers 
from other sections. The contrasts were sometimes 
sharp and wide. New York, with its few vast land- 
holders and its many tenants, was distinctly aristo- 
cratic. Slavery had given the same tendency to the 
more southern States. In the troops from these sections 
there was more care for appearance, and the grades of 
rank were more distinctly marked. Graydon observes, 
" There were none by whom an unofficer-like appear- 
ance and deportment would be tolerated less than by a 
city-bred Marylander, who at the same time was dis- 
tinguished by the most fashionably cut coat, the most 
macaroni cocked hat, and the hottest blood of the 
Union." Between such contrasted troops there could 
not but be some friction, — enough to exercise no very 
beneficial influence upon the campaign. Indeed, a 
clear observer testifies that " since the troops from the 
Southern States have been associated with those from 
New England, a strong prejudice has assumed its 
unhappy influence, and drawn a line of distinction 
between them. " 

Especially unfortunate it was, that, in addition to 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 69 

all this, there grew up in the minds of Eastern soldiers 
a bitter hostility toward their New York commander. 
Everybody sees now that Schuyler was a man of stain- 
less integrity, a true patriot, and that to his foresight 
and energy the country owed a great debt. But he was 
a punctilious man, who could not abide want of disci- 
pline, and in whose nostrils the very qualities which 
belong to raw militia were an offence. And so, while 
his earnest support of his native State in her strife 
with the Green Mountain boys had already alienated 
Western New England from him, his anger and rebukes, 
well enough merited, completed the breach, and half- 
hearted obedience was the direct result. That it should 
ever have been believed by any considerable body of 
men that General Schuyler was a traitor, and that he 
received the pay of treason by collecting silver bullets 
which had been fired into the American camp from 
Burgoyne's guns, looks almost too ridiculous for cre- 
dence. It simply shows how deep was the distrust, 
and what a baneful effect it must have had on the con- 
duct of affairs. So however superior Schuyler might 
be to his competitor in character, patriotism, and mili- 
tary ability, and however cruel it might be to rob him 
of the fruit of his labors, when things had come to such 
a pass that New England men would not enlist under 
him, or obey him with cheerfulness when enlisted, his 
removal became a cruel necessity. The story of the 
blind injustice of many noble men towards one as 
noble, is not a pleasant chapter in Revolutionary 
history. 

Of the composition of the British army less needs to 
be said. Its veterans had, no doubt, the virtues and 
vices of mercenary soldiers. But little or nothing dis- 
creditable to them has been handed down. Possibly, 



70 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

at this late day, in respect to the employment of 
Indians, we may abate a little the severity of our criti- 
cisms of the mother comitry. On the one hand, it is 
evident that the British generals looked with profound 
dislike upon their employment. Riedesel records his 
painful emotions; and Burgoyne undoubtedly drove 
them from his service by his humane efforts to keep 
them within bounds. On the other hand, the American 
record is not quite clean. It is certain that Stock- 
bridge Indians were in Gates's army. Herkimer at 
Oriskany was helped by friendly Oneidas. More or 
less, St. Francis and Caughnawaga Indians followed 
Arnold and Montgomery. Even Washington questions 
whether, seeing that they will not be neutral, it would 
not be better to enlist Indians ; and, in 1776, Congress 
actually voted that it was expedient to take two thou- 
sand of these savages into the service. It was perhaps 
therefore more owing to inability than to virtue that 
our escutcheon was not thus early smirched by bar- 
barian alliances. Then, as now, we were glad to use 
the Indian, and reprobated his cruelty chiefly when it 
was turned against ourselves. 

One would not willingly dismiss this branch of our 
subject without recalling a few men, who played their 
part in these campaigns with rare vigor and fidelity, 
and who did perhaps as much as others of wider renown 
to make them finally successful, but whose names, 
through early death or removal from service, have 
almost faded out of sight. And first let us mention 
with honor the name of John Brown, of Pittsficld, 
earliest of all the patriots to project the invasion of 
Canada, and through the long strife a good soldier, in 
counsel wise, in action prompt and daring. Yet how 
many Massachusetts men know who or what he was ? 



FROM TICONDEEOGA TO SARATOGA. 71 

Two years before the breaking out of the Revolution 
there came to Pittsiield, then a little town of eight 
hundred people, a young lawyer of good family. So 
quickly he made his mark, that a year later he was 
chosen to represent the town in the first Provincial 
Congress at Concord. Less than two months after he 
took his seat he was selected, as the fittest man of 
them all, to go to Montreal to ascertain the sentiments 
of the Canadians, and to build up there a revolutionary 
party. That young lawyer, member of Congress and 
secret agent, was John Brown, then just thirty years 
old. His journey to Canada proved his hardihood. It 
was winter. For fourteen days he pressed forward, — 
now in a boat amid the broken and drifting ice of Lake 
Champlain, now plodding through the deep snows of 
the forest, and now wading in the freezing overflow of 
creeks and watercourses. Returned, he was with Allen 
at Ticonderoga. The following July he made another 
yet more perilous visit to Canada, and was four days 
within the enemy's lines, using his eyes well, and 
escaped capture only by leaping from the back window 
of the house in which he was concealed, and fleeing, 
pursued by many soldiers. He accompanied Mont- 
gomery in his advance, and by a daring movement 
captured the little fort at Chambly, and with it the 
very munitions of war with which his chief forced the 
surrender of St. John. Browii had always distrusted 
Benedict Arnold. That able, bad man reciprocated by 
withholding from him his merited promotion and load- 
ing him with foul charges, and then by his great 
influence preventing a fair court of inquiry. Justice 
denied, Brown resigned his commission, and pub- 
lished a card in which occurred these prophetic words : 
"Money is this man's God, and to get enough of it ho 



72 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

would sacrifice his country. " Then followed a remark- 
able scene. Arnold said that he would kick Brown 
whenever he met him. The next day Brown strode 
into the dining-room where Arnold stood amid a group 
of gentlemen. "I understand, sir, that you have said 
that you would kick me. I now present myself to 
give you an opportunity. " A pause. No answer. No 
movement. Brown turned on his heel, saying, "You 
are a dirty scoundrel," and left the room. But no 
private grievance could sour his patriotism. In the 
closing days of the campaign he joined General Lincoln, 
and by him was despatched with five hundred men to 
cut the British communications. Prompt as ever, 
September 18, 1777, he surprised the lines at Ticon- 
deroga, released one hundred American prisoners, took 
three hundred British, and burned four armed ships and 
two hundred bateaux. After Burgoyne's surrender he 
lived three years quietly at Pittsfield. Then from the 
Mohawk Valley came a cry of distress. Sir John 
Johnson and his savage allies were on the war-path and 
near. In that valley, studying his profession, Brown 
had passed some of the pleasant years of early life, and 
he could not be deaf to the cry. At the head of the 
Berkshire militia he hastened forward; and on his 
thirty-fifth birthday, on the 19th of October, 1780, fell 
into an ambuscade at Stony Arabia, and early on the 
disastrous day dropped dead from a shot which his 
manly person had attracted. He died honorably, fight- 
ing for a country which he felt had not been just to 
him, while his traducer and oppressor, not two months 
before, had skulked down the Hudson to take refuge in 
the "Vulture," thenceforward to find his place among 
the living dead. So perished in early manhood the man 
who, more than any other, originated, and who bravely 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 73 

sustained and helped prosperously to close the Northern 
campaigns of the Revolution. 

The name of Seth Warner has not passed into so 
deep an oblivion as that of his contemporary, but it has 
been obscured by the reputation of men who have 
merited less and achieved less. To the popular mind 
Ethan Allen stands as the hero of the Green Mountains ; 
and there is much to warrant it. His strong figure, 
his boldness, his frankness, his humanity, his partisan 
exploits, his power of putting his thoughts into lan- 
guage which you cannot forget, all tended to make him 
the popular idol. But he was rash and eccentric, with 
a high temper, incapable of obedience, and pursuing 
his own plans with obstinacy. His lieutenant, his 
equal in courage and patriotism, was a firmer, steadier, 
and more trustworthy man. On several occasions 
Warner did vital service. At Hubbardton he saved 
St. Clair's army, charging and driving the best British 
soldiers ; and had not Riedesel reinforced Frazer with 
overwhelming numbers, he would have forestalled John 
Stark's glory, and made Hubbardton an earlier Ben- 
nington. At Bennington, when Brayman came up, the 
Americans had been thrown into confusion by their 
own victory, and it was the cry, "Reinforcements close 
by!" which arrested a panic. "Then," says an eye- 
witness, "in five minutes we saw Warner's men hurry- 
ing to help us. They opened right and left, and half 
of them attacked each flank of the enemy, and beat 
back those who were just closing around us, " — and the 
most brilliant victory of the Northern war was won. 
How hardy a soldier Warner was is shown by that 
march, with two hundred men on snow-shoes in the 
winter of 1775-76, across the trackless region between 
Vermont and the St. Lawrence, to join the American 



74 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

army, then so enfeebled by sickness and defeats. But 
hard service and exposure wore him out, and he retired 
to die, old in body, at forty-one years. 

One name we might gladly pass in silence. Had 
Arnold died in that mad charge of October 7, his name 
would have gone down to posterity, all his faults for- 
gotten, as a pure patriot and a great hero, — so bril- 
liant had been his career and so splendid his services. 
You can draw a line the day of Burgoyne's surrender. 
On the surface, all before it is glorious; all after it, 
shameful. Read the journals of Judge Henry and 
James Melvin of that dreadful march through the 
Maine forests. You feel as if the annals of ancient 
and modern warfare could furnish no story of endurance 
to surpass it. At Quebec he divided the honors with 
Montgomery, and wellnigh shared his martyrdom. In 
the naval battle off Valcour Island, so magnificent was 
his courage that he snatched more glory from the jaws 
of defeat than most win from victory. To his energy 
and reckless courage, more than to any other cause, 
Burgoyne owed his crushing defeat ; and the verdict of 
time crowns not Gates, but Arnold, hero of Saratoga. 
To these add his minor achievements: his swift reso- 
lution giving the Americans the control of Lake 
Champlain in 1775; his cool audacity holding in check, 
almost without an army, the enemy after the repulse at 
Quebec; his skilful retreat from Montreal, himself the 
last man to leave the Canadian shore. What other 
general of the Revolution had twined for himself such 
a wreath of glories ? Yet, to a discerning eye, beneath 
the fair surface were all his later faults. Popular with 
the private soldier, to his fellow officers he was tyran- 
nous and overbearing and irascible to the last degree. 
Squibs and caricatures rarely fail to seize the salient 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 75 

foibles of their victims. A bit of doggerel, written on 
the occasion of a sharp quarrel between Arnold and a 
subordinate officer, embalms his irritability : — 

" Wyukoop is a plucky lad, 
And Arnold is another ; 
Both can easUy get mad, 
And raise a tarnal pother. 

" Old Gates, I guess, will set 'em straight, 
Without appeal to Schuyler ; 
I only hope good Colonel ' Koop ' 
Won't bust his angry biler." 

The doggerel is worth quoting, if only to show how 
fast and far slang could travel a century ago ; for it 
was only two years before that the first boiler explosion 
took place at Soho, and originated the derisive advice 
to angry men "not to burst their boilers." But a 
fierce and arbitrary temper was not his worst quality. 
From the beginning he was destitute of integrity. The 
soldiers whom he enlisted to go to Ticonderoga he 
cheated out of their wages. Taking advantage of his 
power as military commander, at Montreal, he put 
sentinels at the shop doors of merchants, and took 
goods which were afterwards sold for his private emolu- 
ment at Albany. So, from first to last, he was the 
same manner of man, — with skill and courage equal 
to all emergencies; with a despotic temper few could 
abide; with no rectitude to make him worthy of trust, 
and too self-centred to be a real patriot. 

How refreshing it is to turn from these painful recol- 
lections to the memory of one whose presence gave 
even to the horrors of war a tender grace No book on 
war experience is so attractive as the journal of Baron- 
ess Riedesel. The passionate love of her husband, 



76 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

which gave her courage to cross the ocean and to follow 
him into the dangers and wild solitudes of a hostile 
land; her worship of him and her deep faith in his 
superior skill, so innocently expressed; her patient 
endurance of hardships and terrors to which she was 
all unused ; her warm sympathy with the sufferings of 
soldiers, tending them with her own hands, and feeding 
them from her own stores ; her tearful account of the 
death of brave men amid the roar of artillery, where 
shot pierced their last place of refuge, — all these 
details, so simply yet so touchingly narrated, give to 
her book perpetual interest. That story, told so often, 
and yet never once too much, of her ride with trem- 
bling heart with her little ones through the American 
camp; of the respectful, pitying looks of the rough 
soldiers ; of that manly man stooping to kiss her 
children, and, with thoughtful kindness, providing 
food, shelter, and hospitality, — no nobler testimony 
has ever been given to the real worth of the plain men 
who won American freedom, or to the noble bearing of 
the men who commanded them. 

The results of these three shifting campaigns ! We 
have intimated them, — threefold. They substantially 
closed the conflict in New England. Tryon and Arnold, 
with cruel spite, might arrange forays which had but 
little use or meaning except to alarm the defenceless 
people of Connecticut. An English force might linger 
for two years more at Newport and conduct expeditions 
against neighboring towns which brought no credit to 
their authors. There might be a brief campaign on 
the little island itself; but the war, to all intents, had 
passed southward to new fields, — to New York, to 
Philadelphia, to South Carolina, to Virginia, there to 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 77 

die. Again, tliese campaigns secured the independence 
of the American Colonies. Not merely, as some would 
intimate, because they made certain the French alliance, 
with all its vast aid to us and its vast strain upon 
British strength and resources, but because, as Professor 
Smyth so well states it, " the general conclusion from 
the campaign of 1777 was, that the country presented 
difficulties that were insurmountable, and that the 
enemy could not be brought to engage without his con- 
sent, — that the subjugation of the continent, therefore, 
was impossible." The patriot of that day might not 
have stated it in just such language ; but he saw none 
the less clearly that if thirty thousand men on New 
York soil, beginning the campaign with the prestige of 
victory, could not ward off a capital disaster, and could 
hold nothing outside the range of the guns of their 
fleet, then this game of conquest was over. Not 
Valley Forge, not the reverses in South Carolina, not 
months or years of weary waiting, could remove him 
from this steadfast conviction. All the more the pity, 
he thought, that it should take the good King over the 
water five more years to reach the same conclusion. 

But one result of the Northern campaigns is not 
perhaps in our day so clearly appreciated : that they 
bound the Canadian Provinces for one hundred years at 
least in willing loyalty to Great Britain. There can 
be but little doubt of the favorable feeling of the 
Canadians at the opening of the Revolution. The first 
action of Congress assumes it: "Voted, that General 
Schuyler, if it be not disagreeable to the Canadians, 
do immediately take St. John and Montreal." Well 
informed observers thought that nine tenths of the 
people favored the Bostonians. Even the Indians, 
especially those of the St. Francis and Caughnawaga 



78 FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 

tribes, assured Major Brown that they had refused to 
take up arms against the Americans, and added, that, 
if they were obliged to fight at all, they should take 
part with their friends in New England. These state- 
ments were substantially correct. Brown himself owed 
his safety during his hazardous visits to Canada in no 
small measure to the friendship of the people, who kept 
him informed of the motions of the military. When 
Arnold's half-starved followers came straggling through 
the wilderness, they were received with open arras into 
the villages around the Chaudiere, and fed, sheltered, 
and comforted. Some two or three battalions actually 
enlisted in the rebel service; perhaps a thousand in 
all. Moses Hazen, one of their officers, became a 
Brigadier General, and served with credit. These 
troops were called Congress's Own, and some two or 
three hundred of them followed the fortunes of their 
new allies and received grants of land, after the Revo- 
lution, from the State of New York. Such was the 
condition of things in 1775. And if, immediately upon 
the breaking out of the war. Congress could and would 
have followed Ethan Allen's advice, and sent forward 
at once a strong body of troops, there seems to be but 
little question that for the time being, and perhaps 
forever, Canada would have been annexed to the thir- 
teen Colonies. At most, there were but a few hundred 
regulars in the Province, and no others came, or could 
come, for the space of a year. The bands of Loyalists 
who, under Colonel McLean, afterwards did such royal 
service, were not then organized. It is difficult to 
understand from what quarter strenuous resistance 
could have come. But the golden moment passed : 
and, as the nspect of affairs changed, the love of many 
waxed cold, and then turned into actual dislike. If 



FROM TICONDEROGA TO SARATOGA. 79 

the cause of this change of Canadian feeling is asked, 
the first reply would be that Governor Carleton's wise 
and conciliatory policy had had its natural effect. His 
military skill some may question, but few that he was 
a sagacious, large-hearted administrator of government, 
lie was firm yet mild, vigorous and at the same time 
lenient, and while he repressed the disaffected he also 
won them to his side. Then, as the campaign wore on, 
and the affairs of the Americans seemed to look more 
and more desperate, people began to doubt the wisdom 
of rebellion, and to hesitate about embarking in this 
sinking ship. Besides, the American soldiers played 
into Carleton's hands. What Arnold did by wholesale 
at Montreal, many of them did all over the country by 
retail. Peasants were threatened, and even branded, 
for asking payment of debts. Horses were taken by 
force or by threats, even by the privates. Certificates, 
unsigned and worthless, were given in pay for goods. 
To this was added the stupid folly of awakening the 
anger of the French peasants by insulting and robbing 
their priests. In short, in the American army, as 
indeed in all armies, there were men without reason, 
without integrity, and without respect for others' 
rights. So a change of feeling came, and, as such 
changes are likely to be, was thorough. And in 1777 
the Province, with little exception, was entirely and 
earnestly loyal. So it was settled for then, — for a 
century. Whether it will ever be different, or whether 
for us or them it would be better if it should be 
different, it is not the business of an article which 
seeks to deal with facts accomplished to inquire. 
Enough that the campaigns of 1775, '76, and '77 found 
the Canadas disposed to be rebel, and left them glad 
to be loyal. 



THREE EPISODES OF THE NORTHERN CAM- 
PAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION.! 

Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum, January 23, 1878. 

ON the 19th of April, 1775, three hundred Massa- 
chusetts militia-men — mostly farmers — stood 
on the banks of Concord River, opposite Old North 
Bridge, and exchanged volleys with a detachment of 
British soldiers, and compelled them to retreat. By 
this act the Colony took up the gauntlet which King 
George had thrown down, and the American Revolution 
began. 

The second audacious movement in that momentous 
struggle was made two days after, when ten thousand 
of the best British soldiers were shut up in Boston by 
twenty thousand half-armed militia, commanded by 
generals who had graduated from the lawyer's desk, 
the farmer's plough, the blacksmith's forge, the l)Ook- 
seller's shop, and the doctor's office. 

A third, and if possible yet more audacious enter- 
prise, was crowned with success just three weeks after 
Concord fight. On the 10th of May, as the first beams 
of morning were flushing the eastern horizon, Ethan 
Allen with eighty-three men surprised the strong 
fortress of Ticondcroga, — which within the memory 
of the assailants had rolled back in bloody defeat a 

^ This Lecture covers some of the same ground as the preceding 
article, but in many respects it is quite different, and so both have 
been printed. — Editor. 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 81 

great army, and, as every schoolboy knows, they com- 
pelled the British commander by the authority " of the 
great Jehovah and the Continental Congress " to sur- 
render. With this achievement began that invasion of 
Canada, which promised one hundred years ago to 
make real what is said to have been the dream of 
Charles Sumner, "that all American soil should be 
under American government." 

Who shall worthily delineate the great plans, the 
heroic deeds, and the fluctuating fortunes which filled 
with incessant activity thirty long months ? The skill 
of generals, the courage and endurance of soldiers, the 
patriotism of the people, made that whole region 
stretching along the banks of the Upper Hudson, by the 
shores of beautiful Lakes George and Champlain, down 
the Sorel and St. Lawrence to Quebec, and thence 
through the Maine woods to the Atlantic, true classic 
ground in American history. To tell the whole story 
would require volumes. All I can hope to do is to call 
attention to a few of its episodes. Or rather I would 
select and depict two or three striking incidents in the 
Northern campaigns of the Revolution. That you may 
the better grasp the true meaning of such incidents, 
and place them in right relations, let me attempt a 
concise statement of the causes which led to these 
campaigns, and, if I may, clearly outline the campaigns 
themselves. 

In 1775 the colonists of New England and New York 
had come into a state of open rebellion against the 
apparently overwhelming power of Great Britain. 
North of them were a people whose history and tradi- 
tions were altogether different from their own. They 
were the French Canadians, whose settlements, hugging 
the shores of the St. Lawrence and Sorel Rivers, made 

6 



82 NORTPIERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

up a sparse population of perhaps one or two hundred 
thousand people. By the fall of Quebec in 1759 these 
people had come under British rule, and their country 
was garrisoned by British troops. But at first sight 
this would not seem to imperil the Colonists. For 
between Canada and the towns on the Hudson and on 
the Atlantic coast there was then a broad strip of 
primeval forest, varying in width from one hundred 
and fifty to two hundred miles. A vast region ! desti- 
tute of culture ! without population ! without roads ! 
made rugged by steep mountains and hills ! cut and 
slashed by swift running streams full of dangerous 
rapids and choked and made incapable of navigation by 
fallen trees ! The Indian, with instincts sure as those 
of the wild beasts which roamed it, could thread its 
recesses with certain and steady step. The -white 
scouts and rangers, taught in the rough school of their 
barbarous foes, had learned to imitate them. But to a 
disciplined army, with horse and artillery and stores, 
those pathless solitudes furnished an insurmountable 
barrier. 

But in this barrier there was one weak spot. Take 
down your map. You find the great river St. Lawrence, 
navigable through its whole length, and flowing in a 
northeasterly direction at an average distance of one 
hundred and fifty miles from the English settlements 
of that day. Midway in its course, directly north of 
the boundary line between New York and Vermont, it 
receives the waters of a river, then known as the Sorel, 
now as the Richelieu or St. John. You ascend that 
river. Soon you are on the broad surface of Lake 
Champlain, of which indeed it is the outlet. But Lake 
Champlain by its connected waters of Lake George and 
South Bay reaches to within ten miles of the Hudson 



NORTHERN CAI^IPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 83 

River. Here then was an opening into the very heart 
of the country. The Indian named Lake Champlain 
"the gate of the country." It was. Over those placid 
waters, long before the foot of white man had trodden 
its shores, fleet after fleet of canoes had glided, bearing 
to and fro savage armies in the unceasing warfare 
which was waged between the Canadian Indians and 
the famous Six Nations of New York. Across those 
same waters had come Montcalm and Dieskau, and the 
other French captains, during that seventy-five years' 
struggle between England and France for supremacy in 
the New World. 

Two strongholds, originally built by France and then 
held by England, dominated these waters, — Crown 
Point, which commanded the narrow neck of water 
between Champlain and South Bay, and Ticonderoga, 
built on the little river which connects Lake George 
with its larger neighbor. Whoever held the strong- 
holds of Quebec and Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence, 
and St. John and Chambly on the Sorel, had a firm 
base for hostile operations against the Colonists close 
at hand. Whoever controlled the Lakes had an open 
door, through which to pour his troops into the heart 
of the Colonies, and down the Hudson to New York 
City itself, and thus dismember the confederacy. 
Behold in this the efficient cause of those three Northern 
Campaigns of the Revolution, which terminated in 
Burgoyne's surrender. The patriot leaders felt that 
they must possess Canada. Not because of any harm 
or good the peaceful French peasants might do them. 
But because they felt it to be a question of life or 
death, of freedom or bondage, whether that military 
gateway was open or shut, and whether that secure 
base of hostilities was held by the mother country or 
themselves. 



84 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

Yet, singularly enough, the first steps towards the 
solution of this question were taken by individuals, 
and not by congresses or authorities of any sort. The 
Provincial Congress of Massachusetts did indeed appoint . 
a Committee of Correspondence, — Samuel Adams and 
Joseph Warren as usual at the head, — to inquire what 
was the feeling of the Canadian people. And this 
committee appointed that gallant soldier. Major John 
Brown of Pittsfield, — whose very name is forgotten in 
the State whose annals he adorned, — a secret agent 
to go to Canada and ascertain the temper of its peo- 
ple. This he did, encountering on his winter's journey, 
through snow and ice and flood, incredible hardships 
and no little peril. He reported that our neighbors 
were friendly, but so few in numbers, and so watched, 
that they would not dare to make a movement until an 
American army was on their soil. These remarkable 
words closed his report: "One thing I mention as a 
profound secret. The fort at Ticonderoga must be 
seized as soon as possible, should hostilities be com- 
menced. The people of the New Hampshire Grants 
have engaged to do the business, and in my opinion are 
the most proper persons to do the job." This was 
three weeks before Concord fight. 

When the 19th of April called America to arms, it 
was still private enterprise which struck the first blow. 
For on the last day of April two private gentlemen of 
Connecticut, Captains Mott and Parsons, started from 
New Haven with fourteen followers. At Pittsfield, 
Massachusetts, they were joined by Colonel Eaton and 
Major Brown with forty more. While at Castleton, 
Vermont, they found Ethan Allen and Seth Warner 
with ninety Green Mountain boys. So before one 
hundred and forty men, mostly plain farmers, Ticon- 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 85 

deroga and Crown Point fell; and the keys both of 
New York and Canada were snatched from British 
hands. All this on private responsibility. Out of this 
bold act grew the " Three Northern Campaigns of the 
Revolution." Congress still hesitated, — hesitated so 
long that the conquest of Canada, a certainty in May, 
became a problem in September, and an impossibility 
in December. 

The first campaign began thus. Early in September, 
1775, General Montgomery left Crown Point with a 
force which should have been 5,000, and was 1,500, and 
sailed down Champlain. A fortnight later Benedict 
Arnold with 1,100 picked men started to reach Quebec 
through the Maine forests. By the middle of November, 
Montgomery had taken St. John, Chambly, Three 
Rivers, and Montreal, and was master of the St. 
Lawrence up to the walls of Quebec. By the middle 
of November, too, Arnold with a few hundred followers 
had struggled through those Eastern wilds, and from 
the other side was threatening the same stronghold. 
So far all had gone well. But on the 31st of December, 
in a desperate assault upon the town, Montgomery was 
slain and Arnold wounded, and the remnant of their 
forces hurled back in bloody defeat. That was the 
first campaign. Three months of victorious advance 
till success seemed sure. Then overwhelming failure 
in the last and heaviest stroke. 

The second Northern Campaign of the Revolution 
began May 6, 1776. Then General Carleton, the 
English commander in Canada, heavily reinforced from 
England, assumed the offensive, and attacked the 
American army, reduced to a shadow of itself by hard- 
ships and the ravages of the small-pox. His forces, 
threefold in number, more than threefold in that ful- 



86 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

ness and perfection of equipments which as much as 
aught else make military strength, easily pushed hack 
the foe, and in quick succession recovered the Cana- 
dian towns; until, on the first of July, five thousand 
American soldiers, half of them sick, many dying, all 
hungry and in tatters, were back at Crown Point, so 
utterly miserable that the physician who visited them 
records that the sight brought tears to his eyes. October 
11th, Carleton removed from his path the last obstacle 
to his advance by the defeat and destruction of the 
American fleet off Valcour Island, and a few days later 
he entered Crown Point. That was the second cam- 
paign. It was substantially a treading back by the 
British over the same ground from which the year 
before they had been driven. 

The third campaign opened early in June, 1777; 
when, on the one hand, Burgoyne with a compact little 
army of 8,000, better furnished than any which had be- 
fore stood on American soil, started down Lake Cham- 
plain bound, via Albany, to New York ; and when, on the 
other hand, Barry St. Leger, with 1,750 men, regulars. 
New York Loyalists, and Indians, set out from Oswego 
to reach the same destination through the rich Mohawk 
valley. It ended with the disastrous retreat of St. 
Leger, August 22d, and Burgoyne's surrender, the 17th 
of the following October. Its incidents were the 
capture by Burgoyne of Ticonderoga, July 5th ; the 
battle of Hubbardton, July* 7th; that of Oriskany, 
August 6th; Bennington, August 16th; and Burgoyne's 
two fatal battles of Stillwater and Freeman's Farms in 
September and October. So closed the third and last 
of the great Northern Campaigns. A drawn game in 
some respects. But the advantage was with the 
Americans. They retained the keys of the Lakes. 



NOETHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION 87 

They captured a great army. But they did not add 
Canada to the Confederacy. Far from it. In 1775 
they found Canada friendly. They left her in 1777 
indisputably averse to further intimacy, and the annex- 
ation of that Province was indefinitely postponed. 

From each of these memorable campaigns I select 
one episode, — or rather I choose a single enterprise 
or encounter, — so complete in itself, that I may hope 
to make its purpose and real quality clear to your 
minds. 

From the campaign of 1775 I choose Arnold's expe- 
dition through the Maine forests to Quebec. And this 
for two reasons: first, because of the astonishing 
nature of the achievement itself; and second, because 
the fortunes of the campaign hung on the success or 
failure of this expedition. If you recall the outline 
which I have just given, you will remember that in 
September General Montgomery with a very inadequate 
force started from Crown Point to invade Canada. He 
had to march or sail hundreds of miles, far away from 
supplies, far away from reinforcements, finding many 
strong posts to capture and an ever increasing foe to 
oppose, while at the end he would come face to face 
with the frowning citadel of Quebec. On such a 
venture did not success seem impossible ? If now, 
while he engaged the attention of his opponents, a 
select force, secretly threading the forests of Maine 
and silently floating over its waters, should all unfore- 
seen and from an unexpected quarter burst upon Quebec 
wellnigh stripped of its defenders, the fate of the 
Province would be sealed. This was the plan. We 
know now that it was a good one. It failed, not 
because of the stupendous natural or artificial obstacles. 



88 NOKTHERN CAaiPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

but because a trusted messenger betrayed everything to 
the British commander weeks before Arnold could 
appear on the scene of action. 

The story of this march has been told by Arnold 
himself, by Judge Henry of Pennsylvania, by James 
Melvin, private, and by several others. The com- 
mander was Benedict Arnold, standing then in the first 
rank both as patriot and soldier. He was about forty 
years old, short of stature, florid in complexion, physi- 
cally a combination of activity, energy, and endurance. 
He was brave, not simply to temerity, but almost to 
madness; yet in the quickest rush of his passion he 
had that clear perception of every error of a foe which 
makes a true soldier. Insolent to superiors, overbear- 
ing to equals, by the private soldier he was beloved 
and trusted. His evil qualities, his dishonesty, his 
rapacity, his readiness to sacrifice even his country to 
revenge, had not at that time revealed themselves. 
Such was the chief. His officers were picked men. 
Daniel Morgan, the Virginia wagoner, at Saratoga was 
second in valor and conduct, — if second at all, — to 
Arnold. A few years later, by his defeat of Tarleton 
at Cowpens, he turned the tide of Southern war. 
Christopher Greene won glory by his stout defence of 
Eed Bank against the Hessians. Henry Dearborn was 
first General and then Secretary of War. There was one 
volunteer whose brilliant talents and evil career have 
given him almost a world wide notoriety, if not fame. 
I speak with sorrow the name of Aaron Burr. The 
soldiers were worthy of their leaders. Washington 
with his usual magnanimity had spared from his scanty 
forces around Boston eleven hundred of his best troops, 
"rude and hard.y, unused to the discipline of camps, 
but utterly fearless, " is the report of one who was with 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 89 

them. They were more than that, — patient of hardship 
beyond the capacity of ordinary men. 

The expedition sailed from Newburyport September 
13th. Five days after it was at Gardiner, near the 
mouth of the Kennebec, where the soldiers disem- 
barked. Here were two hundred bateaux which had 
been built — so the story runs — in the preceding 
fortnight. Naturally enough, under hard usage they 
showed signs of weakness in almost as brief a time. 
However, as they were never paid for, though Colonel 
Colburn and his sons petitioned for generations to be 
reimbursed, perhaps they were good enough for the 
price. Five days more and they had pushed on to Fort 
Western, near the present city of Augusta. Another 
week brought them to the outmost verge of civilization 
at Norridgewock. Here their troubles began. Before 
them was a journey through an absolutely uninhabited 
wilderness, and upon the bosom of rivers whose course 
and character were imperfectly understood, but known 
to be impeded by many and dangerous falls and rapids, 
and broken by long and difficult carrying places. The 
second week in October they reached the head waters 
of the Kennebec. This was the easiest part of their 
advance. Yet Arnold writes, that the soldiers might 
well be taken for amphibious creatures, that of the 
hundred miles passed over they had waded half the 
distance, pushing the boats up the rapid stream by 
main force, and giving variety to their toil by bearing 
the boats and all their contents around rapids, and 
along paths narrow, often rough and steep, and some- 
times choked by undergrowth. 

Arrived at this point, they found this piece of work 
cut out for them. All they had — boats, provisions, 
ammunition, clothing — was to be borne on the 



90 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

shoulders of nine hundred weary men to Dead River. 
This was the character of the portage. First four 
miles of carrying up a precipitous path to a pond, three 
quarters of a mile across. Then a second carrying 
place of a mile, to a second pond half a mile wide. A 
third carrying place of a mile and a half to a pond one 
and a half miles in breadth, succeeded. Finall}^, a 
fourth carrying place of four miles and a half — a con- 
siderable portion of this last through a mossy bog in 
which the men sank knee-deep and sometimes to their 
arm-pits — brought them to Dead River. Much of the 
way a path had to be cut through the primeval woods ; 
and to-day a narrow strip of evergreen running in a 
thin line through an older growth of hard wood is said 
to mark the course and to be a monument to the 
industry of Arnold's soldiers. 

Arrived at Dead River, the boats were paddled, 
poled, and pushed eighty-seven miles, having been 
taken out and borne around dangerous places no less 
than seventeen times. Many of the boats having been 
destroyed, the rest were so overloaded that a large 
portion of the troops marched on land following the 
course of the river. But what with tangled thickets to 
be cut through, rough pathless hills to climb, and miry 
swamps to ford, they found the way no easier on land 
than by water. No wonder that the soldiers by this 
time were ragged, their shoes worn out, and replaced 
by every kind of makeshift, and that even their skin, 
from bearing many burdens and encountering many 
thorns, was about as worn as their clothing. 

The close of October brought them to the place called 
"the height of land," where on one side the waters 
flow toward the Atlantic and on the other to the St. 
Lawrence. Before them was the Chaudiere River, most 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 91 

aptly named "the Caldron." For, as one diary states, 
"every foot of its head waters was like a boiling pot." 
Here they resolved to leave most of their boats, and 
dare a march through an unknown forest. They might 
as well have left them all, for erelong the tumultuous 
water wrecked most of them. The biting wind which 
SAvept these highlands pierced through their thin and 
tattered garments ; snow and sleet drenched them ; and 
to put a climax to their sufferings they found that they 
had no meat remaining and only five pints of flour to a 
man. Two women, wives of petty officers, accompanied 
them in this tremendous journey. Their cheerfulness, 
their patient endurance, "wading," as is recorded, 
"without a murmur through the overflow of the 
Chaudiere, where the thin ice had to be broken, and 
where they sometimes sank to their arm-pits," shamed 
the men in their lesser fortitude. 

On November 4th, not having for thirty-two days 
seen the face of a strange white man, they came to the 
first Canadian villages. Absolute starvation had stared 
them in the face. Some had eaten nothing for two 
days ; and then only a broth made from the flesh of two 
gaunt dogs, and a few worn-out moccasons. So closed 
this terrific struggle with Nature in her sternest aspects. 
The struggle with man was now to begin. 

A week more and they were on the banks of the 
St. Lawrence, opposite Quebec. Two hundred under 
Colonel Enos had deserted. Two hundred had been 
sent back, worn out or sick. Seven hundred gaunt, 
ragged, and almost spectral men stood in arms. A 
sorry crew, one would think, to threaten the Gibraltar 
of America. Yet despite all, the treachery of their 
messenger, their own weakness, the strength of the 
place, so great was the alarm, and so few the men to 



92 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

defend, that it is admitted by British writers that, had 
Arnold struggled through a day earlier, or had he 
found boats in which to cross the day he did arrive, 
Quebec must have fallen. But the golden moment 
passed. So but for chance, which plays such part in 
all warfare, this most adventurous of expeditions might 
have ended, not in defeat, but in success. But for 
this, Canada in all probability would have been the 
Northern State or States of the Union ; and questions 
of fisheries and duties would never have arisen to 
plague our rulers, and to strain the relations of friend- 
ship between us and our nearest neighbors. 

From the campaign of 1776 I select the naval battle 
on Lake Champlain, off Valcour Island. You recall 
the course of that campaign. Carleton with his fresh 
army had swept before him the enfeebled American 
force as easily as a brisk October breeze does the fallen 
leaves. By the 1st of July he was at St. John. By 
the 1st of August he had within call a veteran army of 
ten thousand men. A few weeks later he had boats 
enough to float them over Lake Champlain. Could he 
have advanced then, what was there to prevent his 
occupying Albany in ten days ? Of the five thousand 
Sullivan had brought back from Canada twenty-eight 
hundred were in the hospitals. To the dispirited 
remnant few recruits had been sent, and those not of 
the best quality. Plainly this wreck of an army could 
hardly have retarded the enemy's march a single day. 
What assistance could have come from the Southern 
army ? None. On the 20th of August, Washington 
with scant ten thousand men was awaiting in his lines 
on Long Island the attack of Lord Howe with twice 
that number. On the night of the 29th, after a disas- 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 93 

trous defeat, he was stealthily withdrawing his forces 
in that wonderful retreat across East Eiver to New 
York. Had Carleton landed at Crown Point the last 
week in August, in all human probability he would 
have been in Albany in ten days, and for the time 
being at any rate severed New England from the other 
Colonies. 

What hindered him ? Arnold's little fleet. Judged 
by any ordinary naval ideas that fleet was simply 
contemptible. All told, it was not a match for one 
stout sloop of war. Its largest vessel was not bigger 
than a fishing smack, and its smaller ones were mere 
cockle shells. Its cannon were mostly little popguns, 
of three or four pounds or less I Its crew landsmen, 
and its commodore with no more experience than could 
be gained in a couple of voyages to the West Indies. 
But so long as it was the only fleet it did its work just 
as surely as if every gunboat, sloop, or schooner had 
been a stanch ironclad. Two precious months were 
gained. When Carleton was ready to advance, Wash- 
ington had stayed Howe's victorious progress at White 
Plains; confidence was in part restored; recruits had 
poured in; with winter so near, a hostile invasion 
looked too perilous to the British commander. So, 
without firing a shot, the American fleet had won all 
the fruits of victory. It was yet to win out of utter 
defeat much of the glory of victory. 

Valcour Island was in the time of the Revolution a 
little wooded islet, perhaps two miles in length, and 
situated about midway in Lake Champlain. Between 
it and the New York shore was a deep channel, possibly 
a mile or so in width. In this channel Arnold placed 
his little fleet. He had sixteen vessels small and 
great, — if indeed the word " great " can be used, — 



94 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

manned by four hundred and eighty-five men. The 
character of this fleet can readily be surmised, when 
we say that fourteen of its number were constructed 
from timber which three months before was standing 
in the forest ; that the sides of several of them were so 
low that barricades of fascines had to be built to make 
them tenable. Not one man in five of the crew had 
seen salt water. The majority were not even fresh 
water sailors. The artillery was pig metal in July. 
So ignorant of the use of guns were the men that 
Arnold had to point with his own hand his cannon. 
Arnold was put in command simply because in his 
somewhat varied career he had had a few months' 
experience at sea; just as he was held to be a fit 
person to go to Quebec, because his excursions as a 
horse trader had given him some knowledge of the 
country, which old employment led the garrison of 
Quebec to salute him from the walls with the not 
flattering cries of "Horse jockey, old horse jockey!" 

Arnold in later days has been severely criticised for 
his choice of situation. It is a sufficient answer to say, 
that never, until his own base treason set all hearts 
against him, was a lisp of complaint made. Besides, 
if in this narrow strait, where the enemy could not 
deploy his full force, he could not win victory, what 
was his chance out on the open lake ? It has been 
suggested that Arnold, whose audacious mind, fertile 
in expedients never travelled in the ruts of other men's 
thoughts, hoped to conceal himself behind the thick 
shelter of Yalcour Island; and then, when the enemy's 
fleet had passed, to pounce upon the flotilla of unarmed 
transport boats, lying forty miles north at the entrance 
of the Sorel, and destroy them, thus making Carleton's 
advance impossible. Nothing is more probable. 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 95 

At any rate, on the 11th of October the British fleet 
passed Valcour Island on the Vermont side, and was 
rapidly sailing up the lake when the American flotilla 
was discovered, probably by the masts rising above the 
trees. At once the English ships turned, entered the 
channel from the south and put itself in the line of 
the American retreat. A conflict was now unavoid- 
able. Very different was the quality of this fleet from 
that of the one which we have already described. It 
numbered thirty vessels. Three of them were well 
made war ships, built in England, taken apart at 
Chambly, carried round the rapids, and reconstructed 
at St. John. The tonnage and the armament of this 
fleet were three times that of the Americans. Seven 
hundred picked sailors manned it. The guns were 
worked by a detachment from the corps of artillery. 
The officers were of the best. Edward Pellew, after- 
ward Lord Exmouth, rose to highest rank and a 
European fame. 

But one result could come from a collision. Vet 
against this vast disparity the Americans struggled for 
hours until darkness closed around the combatants. 
The British commodore stationed his ships in a line 
across the narrow channel, and awaited the coming of 
morning. The largest American vessel had acciden- 
tally run aground and been burned. A smaller one had 
sunk. On the part of the British there had been a loss 
of two and perhaps three small gunboats. Night settled 
down upon the lake dark with cloud and mist. At its 
coming Arnold with his shattered fleet silently rounded 
the northern end of the island. Unperceived he sailed 
southward, and by morning was out of sight. Unfor- 
tunately, he had to sink two of his vessels, too far gone 
for repair, and to wait some hours to put the rest into 



96 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

better trim. For on the 13th the enemy were descried 
coming on swiftly before a north wind. Arnold's own 
ship, that of Captain Watcrbury, and four gmiboats, 
having been seriously injured in the previous encounter, 
were overtaken. Waterbury at once surrendered. Not 
so Arnold. He fought for five long hours a retreating 
fight nearly surrounded by the enemy. Finally he ran 
his vessels ashore, set them on fire, and by a swift 
march brought his crew safe to Crown Point. Of 
sixteen vessels six were burned, three sunk, one was 
captured, and the rest took refuge under the guns of 
the fort. 

One doubts whether ever before in the history of na- 
val warfare a total defeat was received with the exulta- 
tion proper to a great victory. Bnt it is certain that 
the gallantry displayed on this occasion awakened the 
pride, heightened the courage, and increased the deter- 
mination of the very side which had played a losing 
game. I have often heard an old friend tell the story 
of the battle, as he heard it from the lips of his father, 
who was a petty officer in Arnold's own ship. He used 
to say, that no language could describe the audacity, 
the desperation, the frenzy, with which Arnold fought, 
nor the coolness which he preserved in his maddest 
moments to take advantage of every error of a foe, or 
of any opportunity of time or position. It is melan- 
choly to reflect that this man, standing on the pinnacle 
of fame, — trusted by Washington, admired by the 
whole country, capable of the best service, — was even 
then entering upon a course of personal dishonesty, of 
public peculation, and of injustice to fellow officers, 
which was surely leading him to that gulf of treason in 
whose black depths both fortune and good name should 
be buried. 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 97 

I select from the campaign of 1777 St. Leger's 
advance and the battle of Oriskany. And first let me 
recall again the course of events. In 1775 Montgomery 
from Lake Champlain on the west and Arnold from the 
Kennebec River on the east met under the walls of 
Quebec, there in a crucial trial of arms to lose the day 
and the campaign. In 1776 General Carleton recovered 
all that he had lost in the previous year, and by the 
destruction of the American fleet removed the last bar- 
rier, and, victorious, closed the year at Crown Point, 
returning with the coming of winter to his headquarters 
at St. John. 

You see then that the campaign of 1777 commenced 
under very different auspices from those which pre- 
ceded it. There was no obstacle whatever between the 
British and American frontiers. In eighteen days 
after Burgoyne started from Canada to invade New 
York, he was within ten miles of the Hudson, and 
was only two days' march from Albany, having in the 
mean time defeated the best soldiers of his enemy, and 
captured his last strong fort, Ticonderoga. Nothing 
was in his way but the wreck of a defeated armj-, and 
roads, bad at their best, and now made by Schuyler 
their worst, and wellnigh impassable. Just at this 
moment, when the American general could not spare 
a man for side operations, when he knew that at any 
moment the best equipped army which ever trod our 
soil might assail him, when therefore every nerve was 
at its utmost strain to resist the attack from the front, 
tidings came of a fresh invasion from the west. What 
did this mean ? Much or little ? It meant everything 
that was perilous. It meant that the British authori- 
ties had learned the lesson of Arnold's forest march, 
and proposed to return a Rowland for our Oliver. 

7 



98 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

In imagination take down your map of New York 
again, and study the situation a little. Draw, if you 
please, a line directly north and south, twenty miles 
west of the Hudson and parallel with it. Outside that 
line is three quarters of the Empire State. And out- 
side that line in 1777 there were not five thousand 
white people, all told. A few villages of the Six Na- 
tions and the aboriginal forests filled that whole vast 
space. Trace now the great artery of communication 
at this period with the Northwest. You started at Fort 
Oswego on the shore of Lake Ontario, paddled up the 
Oswego in your canoe, through Lake Oneida, then up 
Wood Creek. Here was a carrying place of several 
miles, across which you bore your canoe and goods to 
the head waters of the Mohawk. Floating down this 
stream you reached Albany, and were in the rear of 
Schuyler's army. To any one coming on this track 
with hostile purpose there was but a single obstacle. 
In the time of the French and Indian wars a work 
called Fort Stanwix was built on the carrying place 
between Wood Creek and Mohawk River, where the 
town of Rome now stands. Its object was to protect 
the primitive line of communication to which allusion 
has been made. Once it was a strong fort ; but it had 
fallen into a ruinous condition. Such as it was, with 
crumbling bastions, a slender garrison, and deficient 
stores, it was the only barrier westward against 
invasion. 

And now its value was to be tested. For on August 
1, 1777, Barry St. Lcgcr with a motley force of 600 
regulars and 1,150 Loyalists and Indians started from 
Fort Oswego for Albany. In two days he was before 
Fort Stanwix, and had summoned it to surrender. 
The consternation of the people in those sparse and 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 99 

feeble frontier settlements, at whose doors were seven 
hundred wild savages with scalping knife and toma- 
hawk, and four or five hundred Tories with hate and 
revenge in their hearts, can only be imagined, not 
described. Had the execution answered to the plan, 
in other words, had twenty -five hundred regulars been 
given St. Leger, as the importance of the movement 
demanded, nothing could have saved the Colony. He 
would have reached Albany about as quickly as his 
men could have covered the intervening space. That 
was the opinion of Burgoyne; that was the opinion 
of Schuyler; and General Greene, no mean judge, coin- 
cided in their views. Even with what he had, he was a 
formidable peril. What saved New York was the bat- 
tle of Oriskany. 

The chief military authority of that region was 
Nicholas Herkimer, an old man of German extraction, 
already more than sixty-five, but still strong and vigor- 
ous, and skilled more in Indian warfare than in regular 
tactics. At the rumor of an invasion he issued an 
order commanding every well man between sixteen and 
sixty to appear, gun in hand, ready to march against 
the enemy, while all other male pei*sons were to hold 
themselves armed to defend their homesteads. To this 
call a most remarkable gathering answered. Four 
hundred were from the militia of the county. Four 
hundred were volunteers from every grade of society, 
who came without any previous organization, simply 
with their trusty guns and brave hearts to use them, 
and fought as steadily and stoutly as veterans of a 
hundred fields. Eight hundred men from a community 
which could not have numbered half eight thousand 
souls. In that number were included doctors, lawyers, 
and members of the legislature. It was haying time; 
L.cfC. 



100 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

but the farmers left their crops to their fate and came. 
To swell the ranks almost the cradle and the grave 
were robbed. Frequently from one household hurried 
grandfather, father, and sons. One family named 
Snell sent out nine, and left seven dead on the field. 
Many other families, whose names are preserved, 
furnished five and four. 

When this little body had advanced to within ten 
miles of the fort, General Herkimer proposed to wait 
for reinforcements. He feared an ambuscade from 
superior forces, and, as the result proved, justly. But 
this did not comport with the adventurous spirit of his 
following. His officers fairly raged. They called him 
"coward," "traitor." The sting of all this was, that 
he had a brother, a nephew, and a brother in law who 
were Tories, and that he knew that his own loyalty 
was suspected. For a time he kept calm, saying that 
he was placed over them as a father, and would not 
lead them where he ought not. Then at last he gave 
the order, " March on ! " 

At the distance of a couple of miles the somewhat 
disordered troops plunged into a marshy ravine through 
which ran a narrow causeway of logs. Just as the 
nature of the ground produced some confusion from all 
sides came a deadly volley. Herkimer fell wounded 
by a shot which killed his horse and shattered his own 
leg. Careless of the suffering, he seated himself on 
his saddle, leaning against a tree. All through the 
struggle his clear tones were heard cheering and 
directing his men. Any other troops would have been 
seized with a panic and been lost. But these were 
men who had been accustomed to cultivating their 
fields with a loaded gun by their side, and to mowing 
their hay-fields in companies, with a sentinel and guard 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 101 

to meet the Indian. So, with stubborn resohition, 
behind trees they stood their ground. Fortunately a 
heavy shower brought a pause to the conflict. The 
Americans took advantage of it to arrange two by two 
in a circle, and henceforth fought with a more equal 
chance. Five hours the combat raged. Then the 
Indians raised the cry " Oonah ! " and retired, and the 
battle was over. 

One element of terribleness cannot be omitted. The 
Loyalists who fought them were their own neighbors, 
who had gone to the same school, sat side by side with 
them in the same church, and tilled adjoining farms. 
An awful bitterness had grown up. It is the universal 
testimony, that these men fought each other with the 
ferocity of tigers. Even brothers who had been nour- 
ished at the same breast sought each other's lives. 
The field was won ; but out of the eight hundred who 
marched on to it two hundred lay dead where they fell. 
Two hundred out of a community of a few thousands. 
Who shall doubt the tale, that there was mourning 
that day in all the loyal households along the Mo- 
hawk ? Herkimer died a few days after, — tradition 
says, calmly smoking his pipe and listening to the 38th 
Psalm, "Make haste to help me, Lord my salvation." 
Two hundred of so little a company died. But they 
saved the state. The Indians had been told that these 
were "pudding-faced Dutchmen," who would not fight. 
But when twelve chiefs and nearly a hundred warriors 
fell, they lost courage. The Loyalists were in hardly 
better case. So when Arnold, advancing to the relief 
of Fort Stanwix, sent before him wild rumors, enlar- 
ging his scanty forces into many thousands, a panic 
easily seized the dispirited forces; and regulars. Loyal- 
ists, and savages left their encampment in headlong 



102 NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 

retreat, — the Indians, it is said, recompensing them- 
selves for their losses by tomahawking and scalping 
such of their white friends as straggled from the main 
body. I am a New Englander in birth and sympathies, 
and am not likely to belittle Bennington or John 
Stark. But I question whether Bennington was more 
remarkable in its features, or in its results more 
important, than the field of Oriskany ; or whether John 
Stark is more worthy of remembrance than that patriot, 
hero, and martyr, Nicholas Herkimer, whose very name 
and the battle he won are omitted from the " Encyclo- 
paedia " published in the State for whose deliverance 
he died. 

I have spoken of three striking events out of many 
just as striking, and my hour is exhausted. But it 
needs but these to show what a remarkable body of 
men it was which inaugurated and carried to a success- 
ful issue the American Revolution, — what courage 
they had, what endurance, what self-sacrifice, what 
force and skill to rise to the height of unforeseen 
emergencies. The more you examine, the more clear 
it appears that our independence was not an accident; 
but the work of those who were full grown men, strong 
in body, clear of mind, large of heart, devoted with 
no uncertain attachment to the principles of freedom. 
They were not either from one locality. The love of 
freedom, the courage to defend it, the fortitude to die 
for it, were sentiments widely diffused. Men of New 
Hampshire, men of Rhode Island, men from the banks 
of the Schuylkill and from far off Virginia, joined 
the men of Massachusetts and Maine in that dreadful 
march to Quebec. The heroes of Yalcour Island were 
mostly from Vermont and Connecticut. And all the 



NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE REVOLUTION. 103 

sorrow and all the glory of Oriskany belonged to New- 
York Germans. And if men of all nationalities and 
sections could unite then to make this a great country, 
ought we not to have faith that, however it may look 
to-day or to-morrow, men of all sections and nationali- 
ties will continue to unite to make it a greater and 
better country. 



THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN 
CONCORD. 

Paper read in the Meeting-house op the First Parish in 
Concord, March 1, 1891. 

CONCORD was the first venture of the Puritan 
inland. The little hamlets scattered along our 
rocky coast were indeed far away from civilized life ; 
but they faced the open sea. This advance into the 
unknown aroused the imagination. Men said, "right 
up in the woods, " as though the wilderness had swal- 
lowed up the settlement. The twelve miles' tramp 
from Watertown through the primeval forest, with its 
tangled thickets and wet swamps (weary and painful 
business enough, no doubt) is set down in the old 
chronicle as something "heroicall." 

And clearly this experience did do its part to shape 
the character of the people, and of the church they 
gathered. An enterprise which landed a little band of 
men, women, and children on a bleak plain, a New 
England winter at hand, shelter to be built, fuel to be 
collected, provisions to be stored — while a broad strip 
of wilderness, in which there were no roads, nor even 
wood-paths, separated them from the rest of the 
world, — must have found or made brave hearts and 
resolute wills. Then consider the isolation, not to be 
measured by length of miles to be gone over, but by 
destitution of means of communication. In 1635 all 
Massachusetts Bay had but four thousand people. A 
pretty small centre of life, one would say. Yet from 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 105 

that centre the new town was practically severed. 
This seclusion was a real condition. Writes Peter 
Bulkeley to the minister of Cambridge, "I would 
gladly hear how the common affairs of the church stand 
with you. I am here shut up, and do neither see nor 
hear. " And to John Cotton he says, " I lose much in 
this retired wilderness in which I live. Help us with 
some of that which God hath imparted to you. " Even 
thirty years later, when in every way the town had 
enlarged, it was said of his successor, Rev. Joseph 
Estabrook, "that he was too bright a star to be muffled 
up in the woods amongst the Indians. " Can we wonder 
that "some faint-hearted souldiers " sought, if they 
did not find, fairer fields ? That a little later the 
stoutest were ready seriously to consider Oliver Crom- 
well's proposal to emigrate to Ireland ? Or that twenty 
years after the settlement Captain John Mason could 
write to John Winthrop the younger that "for the 
planting of Delaware a great supply was tendered from 
Concord per General Willard, Mr. Bulkeley, and, as I 
thinke, the most of that towne. " But isolation has its 
good side. It forces human beings to depend upon 
themselves. Those who stayed through and lived 
through became strong and self-reliant men and 
women. From the beginning the parish was inde- 
pendent. In 1636, quite as soon as fitting shelter had 
been provided for their families, the people made 
arrangements to gather a Christian church, and to 
mark the occasion by proper religious services at New- 
town. Three days before, they invited the Governor 
and Deputy Governor to grace the occasion by their 
presence. Not only Governor Yane, but John Win- 
throp, "the wise and prudent," refused to come. The 
reason given was that the church had gone forward and 



106 PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

" had not come to them before as it should have done, 
and as others had done. " But all the same the people 
went right on, had their service, gathered their church, 
and settled their ministers. The incident is suggest- 
ive. It reveals in the fathers an independence which 
was not disposed to accept dictation even from those 
they loved and respected most. So it was not of 
chance that a century and a half later the children 
rose to the height of a great occasion. To original 
vigor, hardship, seclusion, and the habit of personal 
decision had added fresh power. 

The first minister of this frontier parish — we use 
the words advisedly — was Peter Bulkeley. Until 
expelled by Archbishop Laud for non-conformity, he 
had had charge of the church in Odell, Bedfordshire, 
England. The tradition is, that before he left England 
he had selected the spot on which to plant his church. 
The resemblance in natural features between the new 
home and the old gives some probability to the legend. 
Odell, like Concord, is situated on the banks of a river 
so sluggish and crooked (the Ouse) that Thomas Fuller 
says that it is "more meandrous than the Meander." 
The same green meadows, the same upland plains, the 
same tranquil stream, meet the gaze in the one case as 
in the other. The same with a difference. For here 
soil by nature thin, and perhaps wasted by the savage's 
thriftless husbandry, and meadows clothed with coarse 
water grasses, were there replaced by fields rich with a 
thousand years of culture. Peter Bulkeley was fifty- 
three years old when he came in 1635 to New England. 
Up to the time of his migration his position had been 
one of ease, scholarly refinement, and influence. Ten 
years of his life, from sixteen to twenty-six, had been 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 107 

spent, as undergraduate and fellow, in quiet study at 
St. John's College, Cambridge. Then upon the death 
of his father he succeeded to the benefice of Odell. He 
was " of an honorable family, " one of whose branches 
boasted a viscount and another an Irish archbishop. 
" A very plentiful estate " was his, says his biographer. 
Even when it was sold, under the necessity of imme- 
diate removal, it brought him no less than <£6,000; a 
sum which for practical purposes was clearly equal to 
$100,000 in our day. Add now to external advantages 
that he was himself a man of mark. To use the homely 
words of Neal, "he was a thundering pi-eacher and a 
judicious divine." So all that heart could wish, in 
fortune, in position, and in power to do good, he had. 
And all he gave up for conscience' sake. With wife 
and children he came to Concord; to live the first 
winter in a hut half burrowed out of the hillside ; to 
spend the rest of his days amid surroundings which, to 
one so delicately bred, must have seemed rude and 
harsh ; to minister to an outpost church which never 
numl)ered in his lifetime more than three hundred 
people ; in such work to remain until in 1659 old age 
and death overtook him, and his body was laid away to 
rest in an unmarked grave. Not in the whole list of 
Pilgrim and Puritan worthies was there a more notable 
instance of the sacrifice of self to duty. 

Can we look through the haze of two centuries and a 
half and discern the real man, and tell why one so 
removed by the conditions of his life from observation 
could not be hidden ? One thing is clear: he had that 
indescribable quality we call personal power. In any 
company he would have been a quantity to be con- 
sidered. That was the impression he made on his con- 
temporaries. That is the memory which has lingered 



108 PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

in the traditions of the town. Says the historian 
Hubbard, at the great Synod held at Newtown in 1637, 
"Mr. Thomas Hooker and Mr. Peter Bulkeley were 
chosen moderators, . . . two as able and judicious di- 
vines as any the country afforded. " " The Church is 
bound to bless God for the holy, judicious, and learned 
labors of this aged, experienced, and precious servant of 
Christ," writes Thomas Shepard of Cambridge. "Mr. 
Bulkeley was a masterly reasoner in theology; I con- 
sider him one of the greatest divines among the first 
ministers of New England," is what President Stiles 
records in his diary. "He was esteemed in his day 
one of the greatest men in this part of the world," 
adds Dr. Chauncy. His inherent personal force alone 
explains this wide-spread impression. A man of 
average gifts would have literally been lost in the 
woods. 

It is equally clear that Peter Bulkeley was in temper 
and training, and, to the end of his life, in habit, a 
student. " His education was answerable unto his ori- 
ginal. It was learned, it was genteel, and, which was 
the top of all, it was very pious." "He was a most 
excellent scholar, a very well-read person, and one who 
gave demonstration that he knew what should go to 
make a scholar." Such is Cotton Mather's eulogy. 
All that we know about him confirms the verdict. He 
must have brought with him across the sea what for 
those days was a great library, or else somehow gath- 
ered it after his arrival, to be solace and companion- 
ship in his exile. For in his lifetime he had " endowed 
Harvard College with no small part of his books." 
Yet at his death he left volumes which were appraised 
at seven hundred and fifty dollars. Nor did books or 
pen rest idle. At the very time when the fortunes of 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 109 

the new settlement were at their lowest ebb, when to 
hardship and isolation were added discouragement and 
perhaps dissension, he sent to press his " Gospel Cov- 
enant. " "One of the first-born of New England," they 
called it. This book easily commanded the intellectual 
respect of the men of his day. The subject, the line 
of argument, the method of Scripture reference, all 
belong to a past age. Few persons could summon up 
either the interest or the patience to read it through. 
Nevertheless the work has many passages which are 
weighty and impressive, and some lines which would 
be esteemed eloquent, wherever found. Here is a brief 
extract: "True holinesse toward God is ever accom- 
panied by righteousnesse toward men. There is true 
holinesse, and there is false, lying, dissembling holi- 
nesse. How is one to be discerned from the other ? 
Holinesse of truth hath righteousnesse going with it. 
But false holinesse thinks it enough to seeme holy 
toward God, neglecting duties of justice and righteous- 
nesse toward men. It was not so with the holy apostle, 
who, speaking of his own conversation among the 
saints, appeals to their consciences, how holily, how 
justly, how unblamably, he had his conversation among 
men. " Pretty direct, is it not ? Pretty practical, not 
far away from the drift of the best religious teaching 
of to-day ? The closing paragraph has been quoted 
more than once, but it is so full of dignity and pathos 
that it will bear repetition: "There is no people but 
will strive to excell in something. "What can we 
excell in, if not in holinesse ? If we look to number, 
we are the fewest. If to strength, we are the weakest. 
If to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all the 
people of God through the whole world. We cannot 
excell (nor so much as equall) other people in these 



110 PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCOED. 

things. And if we come short in grace and holinesse 
too, we are the most despicable people under heaven ; 
our worldly dignitie is gone. If we lose the glory of 
grace too, then is the glory wholly departed from our 
Israel." Such was the strong spiritual meat with 
which the Puritan minister fed his flock, as they came 
on the Lord's Day from their rude huts on "one 
straite street under a sunny banke " to the equally rude 
meeting-house, which stood " on the hill near the brook 
on the easte of Goodman Judgson's lott." 

To the last Mr. Bulkeley preserved his love and 
knowledge of the classic tongue. In his old age he 
wrote Latin verses, of which art he was pronounced to 
be "a competent master." However it may be as to 
the Latinity, the sentiments were elevated, as the fol- 
lowing nearly literal translation of one written in his 
seventy-fifth year testifies : — 

" Old age with idle days hath come : naught else 
But useless weight I seem, yet grant, great God, 
While I do live, my life may be a praise 
Unceasing, and a glory to thy holy name. 
May I not live and pay no homage meet ; 
But rather death soon end my fruitless years. 
Among thy saints on earth I would declare 
Thy words of life, or sing thy praise above. 
In life, in death, may I be thine, O Christ ! 
My life is thine alone, and thine my death." 

Add now to personal presence and power, and 
genuine scholarship, what is yet more important, good 
sense and sound judgment. Hardly had he reached 
his new home when the fierce Antinomian controversy 
broke out. It convulsed the whole of the little com- 
munity. The wisest and the best were involved in it. 
It divided men one from another, and created great and 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. HI 

sometimes lasting bitterness. In our day it seems 
incredible that thoughtful and devout men and women 
should have accepted enthusiastically a doctrine whose 
essence was boldly stated by its founder in the phrase, 
" Good works do not promote salvation" ; or, as its New 
England expounders stated it, " Sanctification doth not 
prove justification." But so it was. The saintliest 
of women, the purest of men, espoused doctrines which 
made all good conduct worthless in the sight of God. 
" The Church of Concord seems to have been entirely 
free from this new species of delusion," remarks Simon 
Willard's biographer. If so, it must have been largely 
owing to the spiritual sanity of its pastor. Peter 
Bulkeley was undoubtedly a Calvinist, and honestly 
accepted the views of the religious body to which he 
belonged. Bat he evidently had a sense of proportion, 
a wholesome conviction that no Christian character is 
either symmetrical or sound in which faith or works 
are omitted. Indeed, the closing passage of the Church 
Covenant, attributed to him, — which runs thus, "We 
do solemnly promise before the Lord that we will care- 
fully avoid all oppression, griping, and hard dealing, 
and walk in peace, love, mercy, and equity with each 
other," — does seem to justify the accusation that the 
Concord ministers "made much of the Covenant of 
Works," though few in our day would say that they 
made too much of it. Sound sense was never more 
evident than in his treatment of the celebrated John 
Cotton. Mr. Cotton and the members of his church 
refused to take any part in his ordination, or even to be 
present at the services. And apparently for no other 
reason than a subtle disagreement as to the relative 
place in man's salvation of faith and works. A grosser 
affront could hardly have been offered to one who had 



112 PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

given a lifetime of fidelity to Puritan principles. It 
might naturally have awakened, even in a forgiving 
nature, lasting resentment. But he would not suffer 
any coldness to grow up. Afterward he corresponded 
with his opponent, sought his advice, and apparently 
made him friendly visits. This was not because he 
had an impassive nature. When he thought the com- 
mon weal was endangered, he could feel strongly 
enough and speak hotly enough ; as when with a great 
deal more vigor than politeness, or even justice, he 
terms Mrs. Hutchinson "that Jezebell whom the 
Devill sent over thither to poison these American 
churches. " It is reported of him, that he, — first of 
the Puritan ministers, — sought through systematic 
catechising to give orderly religious instruction to 
the young. This again would indicate the possession 
of a well-balanced mind, which no finespun theories 
could blind to the influence of Christian nurture in the 
formation of character. 

Cotton Mather reports that Mr. Bulkeley in his inter- 
course with others had a manner at once kind and 
familiar and marked by dignity. The story of Ambrose 
Martin, which Mr. Walcott has preserved in his " Con- 
cord in the Colonial Period," certainly testifies both to 
his real kindness of heart and his wisdom. Ambrose 
Martin was a decayed gentleman, apparently in the 
evening of his days. He asserted — what with us 
would be a truism — that the Covenant was a human 
invention, adding some disrespectful words about min- 
isters. For this petulance he was fined ten pounds, an 
enormous sum considering the value of money at that 
time. He refused to pay it ; whereupon his cow was 
sold, and a levy made oh his house and land, from 
all of which twenty pounds was obtained. The man's 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 113 

obstinacy or sense of injury continued, and he declined 
to make any claim for the ten pounds overplus, unless 
the whole sum was returned to him. At this stage 
Mr. Bulkeley appears in the case. A petition written 
by him and signed by himself, his colleague, and 
thirteen citizens of the town, was sent to the authori- 
ties. It represented that Martin's course was to be 
imputed "to his infirmitye and weakness," and that 
his family were reduced to great extremity, and 
respectfully asked that his fine be remitted. Governor 
Endicott returned an icy negative. The money re- 
mained unclaimed for ten years, when probably Martin 
and his wife had ended their days in poverty. One 
cannot but agree with Mr. Walcott that in this trans- 
action the minister and his people appear to advantage. 
But simple friendliness of demeanor, or readiness to 
forgive, does not measure the sweetness and richness 
of Mr. Bulkeley's life among men. His wider relations 
with his neighbors and the public were equally large 
and generous. He brought six thousand pounds from 
England. Twenty-four years after, he had thirteen 
hundred pounds left. What had become of the rest ? 
Had he spent it upon himself, living in the woods in 
a sort of baronial grandeur ? Far from it. " Here 
he buried a great estate," writes Mather, "while he 
raised one still for almost every person he employed, " 
bestowing farms on old servants when he dismissed 
them, then taking new ones to be in their turn treated 
in like manner. His latest biographer suggests that 
many of the first settlers of the town had been his 
tenants at Odcll, and that he naturally felt a special 
responsibility for them. However that may be, it is 
certain that he did cherish toward all whom he had 
led into the wilderness a peculiar sense of responsi- 



114 PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IX CONCORD. 

bility. For he buried in that wilderness more than a 
great estate, — great powers, great learning, and great 
eloquence. A passage in his last will, which 1 have 
never seen quoted, shows how profound was his sense 
of public duty ; and that this liberality was not the 
child of lavishness, or even of sympathy for companions 
in a strange land. " It may perhaps be expected " — so 
runs the document — " that I should bequeath something 
to the publique use of the country ; which practice I wish 
were observed more than it is by those that are of 
ability. But were my estate better than it now is, I 
suppose that I may be therein excused, in regard to 
what I have done formerly in the beginning of these 
plantations, wherein what I have done some few do 
know, but I will be sparing therein. This only I know 
and may say that which 1 did then was an helpe to a 
weake beginning." So the old minister of Concord 
was one of the first of New England to recognize the 
duty of men of wealth to the community, and to enforce 
that duty by his practice. 

Few details of any life cross the chasm of two hun- 
dred and fifty years. But such as have reached us of 
this life reveal a man of strong and well-cultured mind, 
of firm opinions, of warm and occasionally intolerant 
feelings, tempered by sound judgment and calm self- 
control. It has been the good fortune of the quiet 
river town which the minister of Odell helped to found 
to have many jewels in its modest diadem. It can 
point proudly to names which have adorned the rolls 
of literature and the walks of professional life. But 
possibly in that bright list not one can take rightful 
precedence of this obscure minister of a handful of 
exiled men and women. From whatever point we 
view him, whether in respect to his native power, his 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 115 

scholarship, his solid judgment, his liberality, his 
noble public spirit, or his sacrifice for conscience' 
sake, we come back from the contemplation with added 
respect for his ability, his motives, his character, and 
for the impress he left upon the life of the town when 
it was in its formative state. "We feel that, if his lot 
had been cast in the centre of the Puritan Common- 
wealth instead of one of its struggling frontier villages, 
his influence and reputation would have been second to 
none of its remarkable body of educated men. As we 
close this notice there come to the mind the rude 
rhymes of his neighbor, stout Captain Edward Johnson 
of Woburn : — 

" Riches and honour Buckly layes aside 
To please his Christ, for whom he now doth war. 
Why, Buckly, thou hast riches that wiU bide, 
And honours that exceede earth's honour far. 
Thy bodies worne and days in desart spent, 
To feede a few of Christ's poore scattered sheepe, 
Like Christ's bright body, thy poore body rent 
With saints and angells company shall keepe. 
Thy tongue and pen doth to the World declare 
Christ's covenant with his flock shall firmly stand, 
When Heaven and Earth by him dissolved are." 

Peter Bulkeley died in 1659. The next year his son 
Edward succeeded him; and seven years after Joseph 
Estabrook was appointed his colleague. Of these two 
men, and of the condition of the church under their 
administration, little has been preserved ; nor does tra- 
dition add much to our knowledge. Probably the pros- 
perity of the town had increased. The great stress of 
hardship was over. With greater population, larger 
resources, and many additional comforts, plans of 
wholesale emigration were no longer likely to be pop- 



116 PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

ular. Nay, the place, with its broad plain, its softly 
rounded hills, and its gently flowing river, had come 
to look like home. Men and women enjoy themselves 
when their fortunes brighten. Nevertheless times of 
prosperity do not leave on the pages of either general or 
local history the same record as days of hardship and 
struggle. 

So if the successors of the pioneer preacher had been 
in every respect his equals, they would probably have 
fallen into comparative obscurity. But they were not 
his equals. The elder Bulkeley was by nature a strong 
man. And he had been tempered, as they had not, in 
the fires of adversity. To leave behind a fair English 
home, and all its pleasant surroundings, indicated 
strength and cultivated it. Besides, the first minister 
of Concord had the advantage of the best intellectual 
training which England could give to her chosen ones. 
His son had only the instruction which scant libraries 
and ministers burdened with many cares could furnish, 
while his colleague was the child of the little College 
which could muster in all its classes only twenty-six 
pupils. 

Edward Bulkeley was born in Odell. One year in 
advance of his father, at the early age of twenty, he 
came to America, tradition says to prepare for the 
coming of the rest. Probably he fitted, largely if not 
wholly, for the ministry under the direction of his 
father. What Rev. Thomas Shepard of Charlestown 
wrote on the blank page of his Book of Psalms suggests 
queries : " Mr. Edward Bulkeley, pastor of the Church 
of Christ in Concord, told me, September 20, 1674, that 
when he boarded at Mr. Cotton's house at the first 
coming forth of this Book of singing of Psalms Mr. 
Cotton told him that my father Shephard had the chief 



PLANTING OF THE CHUKCH IN CONCORD. 117 

hand in the composing of it." Now when and under 
what circumstances did he board at Mr. Cotton's ? 
Not on his first arrival. For the Book of Psalms had 
not then come forth. Is it an improbable supposition 
that he was residing, as the custom was, with a pious 
and learned man, to be guided in his preparation for 
the ministry ? In 1642 Mr. Bulkeley became the first 
settled pastor of Marshfield, whence he removed to 
Concord in 1658. Of this sixteen years' ministry 
literally not one fact is preserved, except that in the 
second year of it he was admitted to the freedom of 
Plymouth Colony. From 1660 to 1694 he did duty in 
whole or in part as pastor of the Concord Church. 
Then on account of infirmities he was relieved from all 
work, dying two years after, an old man of eighty-two, 
at Chelmsford. 

What do we really know about this second minis- 
ter of Concord ? Very little. He is spoken of as 
"a learned and pious divine." He is even termed 
" famous. " But such eulogy would naturally have been 
applied to any one who had continued his office blame- 
less for half a century. Tradition reports that he was 
lame and feeble. The facts seem to confirm the legend. 
He had just passed fifty when he had to ask for a col- 
league. In the whole history of the parish, since Peter 
Bulkeley in 1644 took full charge, none other has been 
compelled by weakness to do likewise before a great 
old age. 

The form of his dismission from the First Church of 
Boston is peculiar. "Our Brother Edward Bulkeley 
was by the Churches silence consented to be dismissed 
to the Church at Concord by his and their desire." 
What is the force of those words, "by the Churches 
silence " ? — that the step was so fitting that not a 



118 PLANTING OF TPIE CHUKCH IN CONCORD. 

spoken word was needed ? Probably. But one wonders 
whether the First Church was quite weaned from Anti- 
nomianism, and whether it was not glad to be free of 
the son, lest he like his father might " make too much 
of the Covenant of Works." 

In the Massachusetts Historical Collections for 1868 
there is a curious paper. The author was Samuel 
Willard, Concord born and bred, minister of Groton, 
soon to be head of Harvard College; the date, 1671, 
twenty years before the outbreak of the awful delusion 
called Salem Witchcraft; the subject "a strange and 
unusuall Providence of God, which befell Elizabeth 
Knap." This poor creature was clearly sick both in 
body and mind. " Shee was in a strange frame, " he 
writes, "sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing, 
making foolish and apish gestures." She was "violent 
in leapings and strainings, scarce to be held by three 
or four. " She complained of pain in divers parts. In 
obedience to the superstition of the times, she attrib- 
uted her troubles to a neighbor who "had come down 
the chimney." Finally she confessed that the Devil 
had frequently sought to bargain with her for her soul, 
though as yet she had been able to resist him. The 
simple faith of this son of Concord, his quandaries 
and questionings, show what hold witchcraft had upon 
the faith of intelligent and humane people. But the 
trouble became too heavy for him to bear alone. So he 
summoned in Rev. Mr. Rowlandson of Lancaster, and 
Messrs. Joseph Estabrook and Edward Bulkeley, to 
labor with the afflicted one. But the woman, or Satan, 
was too much for their combined forces. The narra- 
tive leaves the poor soul where it found her. All we 
gain is one little glimpse of our second minister, telling 
us that he shared in that delusion which was fated to 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 119 

furnish such a sorrowful chapter for our Massachusetts 
history, 

Mr. Walcott recalls two singular episodes in the 
life of the Church. John Hoar, lawyer, in 1668, was 
fined ten pounds for saying " that the Blessing which 
Master Bulkeley pronounced in dismissing the publique 
Assembly in the Meeting house was no better than vane 
babling." While Philip Reed, " Physitian, ^ in 1670, 
was fined twenty pounds because he said "he could 
preach as well as Mr. Bulkeley, who was called by 
none except a company of blockheads who followed the 
plowtail, and was not worthy to carry Mr. Estabrook's 
books after him. " The remarks were not courteous, 
and certainly they were not discreet. But were they 
true ? One production of Mr. Bulkeley has escaped the 
tooth of time, — his sermon delivered after the return 
of Captain Thomas Wheeler from Brookfield fight. It 
was a time to stir a man's soul. The whole Colony 
was convulsed. Every frontier settlement and every 
lonely farmhouse was in peril. Two of his parishioners 
had been slain. Two more came home so shattered that 
they lingered only a few months. The lot of these 
might any hour be the lot of his hearers. You read 
the sermon through from text to conclusion. There is 
not one throb of pathos in it. You cannot find an 
eloquent line, hardly an impressive sentence. It is a 
maze of Inquisitions and Instructions, of Applications 
and Uses, of Doctrines and Reasons, of Motives and 
Improvements, wherein the mind wanders and is lost. 
How could a tender human heart help breaking through 
the meshes of formality ? And how was it possible for 
men, of rude speech possibly, but of strong and hot 
sympathies, to admire or approve such stiff and 
measured utterance ? 



120 PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

With SO little to guide it is not possible to speak con- 
fidently. Still this is certain. The younger Bulkeley 
has not left behind the impression of power which his 
father did. Apparently he had not his vigorous per- 
sonality, his culture, or his great heart. Mather calls 
him "the worthy son" of a worthy sire. Clearly he 
was that. An honest, faithful, and devout man. But 
with all his real excellence one who did not rise much 
above mediocrity. 

The rude and wellnigh brutal language with which 
Dr. Reed described the comparative merits of his two 
ministers deserved, as it received, condemnation. But 
was not his estimate, put in fitting words, substantially 
correct ? We have not indeed many details of the life 
and character of Mr. Estabrook; hardly as many as 
of his colleague; but their testimony tends one way. 
He had clearly the advantage of a more systematic 
training. He came from his English home fitted for 
the University. The next five or six years he must 
have spent in general and professional study at the 
little College which John Harvard had founded. He 
seems to have occupied at Concord an assured position. 
Judge Scwall alludes to the part he took in several 
important religious services, once certainly with high 
commendation. Some thought, as we have seen, that 
he would have shone in a city pulpit; that is, if the 
Boston of 1700 could be called a city. Even the dis- 
courteous words of the physician, to the extent they 
disparage the elder, praise the younger minister. 
Finally, the obituary notice found in an old newspaper 
is so specific in its eulogy that we feel that real gifts 
and virtues must have been behind it. He was emi- 
nent, it says, in his skill in the Hebrew tongue ; inde- 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 121 

fatigably laborious in his ministry; in his preaching 
plain, practical, and persuasive; in his intercourse 
with his people grave, affectionate, and conciliatory. 
He had so much patriarchal dignity that his people 
loved him as a friend, and reverenced him as a father. 
In his latter days they called him "the Apostle." 
Perhaps no one of these scattered allusions makes 
singly a great impression. Combined, they create the 
feeling that, if he was not a remarkable man, he was 
one of good native power, of well trained mind, faith- 
ful and laborious, and personally winning; in short, an 
acceptable and useful parish minister. 

Little or nothing can be gleaned from the town 
records to add to the scanty knowledge we get from 
outside sources. One or two items do show with what 
difficulties the parish labored, even when the stern 
hardships of the actual planting were over. Much as 
the Church might respect its minister, it was not easy 
to pay him. Only eight months after he took sole 
charge of the pulpit, November 23, 1694, by which the 
town saved fifty pounds heretofore paid Mr. Bulkeley, 
we find this statement: "Mr. Estabrook is unsatisfyed 
in respect to ye yearly payment of his sallary, in regard 
to many neglecting to do according to that promised 
unto him." Whereupon the selectmen called a public 
meeting, December 10, when "it was further voted, 
whether they would give to Mr. Estabrookes thirty 
pounds in money, and fifty -seven in Corne, — at these 
rates, — Wheat 5s. pr Bushell, Rye 4s., Indian 3s., 
Barley 4s. This voat was read at least three times 
distinctly and voted in the affirmative by the whole 
assembly ; and Mr. Estabrook aforesaid Being Present 
did declare himself fully satisfied." Five years after 
it was significantly added, " that all was to be good and 



122 PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

marchantable, " as though occasionally a parishioner 
had brought "lean ears." To the modern clergyman 
three hundred bushels of grain, "marchantable" or 
otherwise, would be something of a burden. How- 
ever, in those days the minister tilled the ground no 
doubt, and had his granary to fill. In May, 1711, 
Mr. Estabrook's health broke, and the selectmen were 
empowered "to assist him in preaching six months." 
But before they could carry out the kindly purpose the 
good man's work was over. The final record of him 
on the town book strikes with a chill. For in town 
meeting, October 9, it was voted "as for Mr. Joseph 
Estabrook's funerall charges the Towne did not see 
cause to allow anything toward the same." Let us 
hope this was because he left a good estate and his 
family did not wish an allowance. Otherwise it would 
look like cold ingratitude for forty-four years of affec- 
tionate service. But whatever the feeling which dic- 
tated this course, could the people have appreciated 
things as they were and were to be, — could they have 
looked back in memory over the seventy-six years of 
church life in which there had been unbroken peace, 
and forward in vision to nearly as many more years, 
disturbed by dissensions, partly personal, partly theo- 
logical, — they would have thought that no testimonial 
to the worth, the fidelity, and the peaceable spirit of 
this good man could be too costly. 

To fix a precise date when the work of planting and 
establishing a town or church may be considered to be 
complete is clearly impossible. For in some sense the 
process never ceases. But in a broad way we may say 
that the turning point in Concord history was at the 
close of Mr, Estabrook's ministry. Then it had ceased 
to be a frontier town. Beyond it was a whole circle of 



PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 123 

towns, some of which had been nearly destroyed in 
King Philip's War, but which now were restored and 
prosperous. As one result, fear of the Indian, which 
must have darkened the experience of the former gen- 
erations, had passed away. The means of communica- 
tion had become more direct and easy ; so that we read 
of trips from Boston to Concord and back in one day 
made with apparent ease. In short, it had ceased to 
be a little hamlet "right up in the woods." It was a 
busy town, interlocked by mutual interests with other 
towns. The population had largely increased, and 
could have scarcely been less than twelve hundred and 
fifty souls. Only one church in the town, none of its 
suburbs, Bedford, Acton, Lincoln, Carlisle, having as 
yet set up for themselves, in few periods of her history 
have so many people fallen to the care of one minister. 
The resources had increased in like proportion. Many 
things indicate this. Rude huts had been replaced by 
comfortable homes. The year 1711 saw the completion 
of what may be called the first permanent place of wor- 
ship. The church of 1635 could hardly have been more 
than a rough log house. That of 1667 was either so 
hastily built, or of such unseasoned timber, that in 1709 
it was going to decay. But the house of 1711 was built to 
last. Each generation has tried its hand at improving 
it ; but the stanch frame abides. One more evidence 
of enlarging resources may be noted. That curious, 
habit of collecting from each family its little portion 
of grain, with which to pay in part the minister, ceased 
upon the death of Mr. Estabrook. His successor not 
only received a larger stipend, but he received it all 
in cash. Thus in all outward ways the town and 
the church were firmly established. In numbers, in 
resources, in means of communication, in sense of 



124 PLA^^TDsG OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

security, in enjoyment of comfort, there was manifest 
growth. It remained for the future to tell how much 
growth there had been in grace, how much diffusion of 
that divine charity by which they should walk together 
in peace and mutual helpfulness. 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD: 

ITS PERIOD OF PERSONAL AND THEOLOGICAL 
DISSENSION. 

Paper read in the Meeting-house of the First Parish in 
Concord, March 8, 1891. 

THE turning point in our Massachusetts history 
is found in that period between the years 1683 
and 1692 when the Puritan Commonwealth lost its old 
charter and received a new one. For more than half a 
century all power, political, religious, and even social, 
had been in the hands of what were styled the freemen 
of the Colony. And who were these freemen ? The 
Colonial Record of 1631 reads thus : " To the end, that 
the body of commons may be preserved of honest and 
good men, it is ordered and agreed, that, for the time 
to come, no man shall be admitted to the freedom of 
the body politic, but such as are members of some of 
the churches within the limits of the same." By this 
enactment the Puritan church obtained control over 
every department of life, and used it. The power to 
vote, to hold office, to make laws, to execute them, to 
decide who should or should not dwell in the land, 
was all in the hands of a body of people who were esti- 
mated in the latter part of the seventeenth century 
to number hardly one fifth of the adult males in 
the community. Palfrey says, "The freemen of the 
Massachusetts Colony had the right to expel from their 
territory all persons who should give them trouble. In 
their corporate capacity they were owners of Massachu- 



126 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

setts by a title to all intents as good as that by which 
any freeholder among them had held his English 
farm." The experience of Mrs. Hutchinson, Roger 
Williams, and others, testifies that they had the will 
to maintain what they held to be their rights. Men 
might think, but they could not speak, contrary to the 
ordinances. Religious differences might exist in the 
secret of the heart, but all expression of them was 
stifled. All amusements contrary to Puritan stand- 
ards, all criticism of powers in church or state, were 
remorselessly punished. Here was a theocracy, pure, 
stern, without charity for minds that craved freedom 
and dreamed of progress. 

Now all changes. The Charter of "William and 
Mary in many ways curtailed the independence of the 
Colonists. But under it the widest differences of reli- 
gious faith were tolerated. To the chagrin of the elders 
right in Boston, the Episcopalian, the Baptist, the 
Arminian, was permitted to rear his place of worship 
and enjoy it. The seat of authority too had shifted. 
The franchise was no longer confined to church mem- 
bers, but became the privilege of nearly every male 
inhabitant. 

Meanwhile other changes, which could not perhaps 
be traced directly to any alteration of the fundamental 
law, had more slowly, but just as surely, come. The 
years from 1675 to 1725 have been called the dark age 
of education in New England. The fathers were many 
of them the fruit of England's best culture. The 
children, in their rude struggle with nature and the 
savage, could not hold on to the refinements. What 
was true of education was just as true of religion. The 
fervor of the zealot had passed away. Whitefield said 
it had sunk " into heartless formality. " Sometimes it 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 127 

was undermined by scepticism, and was hardly a form. 
Even the standards of morality seem to have been 
lowered somewhat. The celebrated Jonathan Edwards, 
describing the Northampton of his day, says, "The 
people, in general, I suppose, are as sober and orderly 
and of as good a sort as in any part of New England. " 
Then he goes on to paint a picture of the disorderly, 
drinking, licentious habits of the young people of both 
sexes, which simply shocks you. Hutchinson affirms 
that the amount of this deterioration was greatly 
exaggerated by the severe ideas of ascetic Calvinists. 
Probably he was right. Still, the religious divisions 
and the moral retrogression were no doubt as real as 
the increasing desire for spiritual freedom and a more 
humane religion. The long, peaceful, and moderate 
ministry of Mr. Bulkeley and Mr. Estabrook had kept 
these things from coming much to the surface of 
Concord church life. But the ferment was there, ready 
to become active. This sketch of the conditions of life 
in the larger community explains the conditions of 
life which so soon manifested themselves in smaller 
communities. 

November 19, 1711, John Whiting was called to fill 
the vacancy caused by the death of Mr. Estabrook, and 
on the 14th of the succeeding May was ordained. His 
ministry opened in sunshine; it closed in darkness. 
All the more is it needful that we should inquire who 
and what the man was. John Whiting was of strong 
Puritan stock. For forty years his father had been 
honored pastor of Southampton, Long Island. His 
mother was daughter of Deputy Governor Thomas Dan- 
forth of Massachusetts. His grandfather was Rev. 
Samuel Whiting, who for forty-three years was the 



128 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

trusted teacher and guide of Lynn, which indeed 
assumed that name in honor of its pastor, who had 
been minister of Lynn Regis, England. His grand- 
mother was daughter of Sarah Bulkeley St. John, and 
through her John Whiting takes his place in the list 
of the five ministers of Concord, who have had Bulkeley 
blood in their veins. To this clerical roll he could 
add of relatives and connections, near and far, at least 
a dozen more, while his marriage with Mary, daughter 
of Rev. John Cotton of Hampton, brought him into the 
family of the celebrated minister of the First Church, 
Boston. Dr. Holmes puts the Puritan clergy in the 
Brahmin class ; and such lineage gave one standing 
in the community. It was not of chance that Judge 
Sewall rose at four o'clock that spring morning to ride 
"in Austin's calash" to Mr. Whiting's ordination, to 
reach home the same day not much before his loved 
Old South bell rang its nine o'clock invitation to 
welcome sleep. Nor was it of chance that, when Mrs. 
Sewall died, the Judge notes in his diary Mr. Whiting's 
comforting visit. These are the tokens of a good social 
and professional position. 

But what sort of a man was behind the position ? 
When John Whiting came to Concord he was thirty- 
one years old; but he had already achieved, as well 
as inherited, an honorable place. Graduating from 
Harvard in 1700, he had been its librarian from 1703 
to 1706, one of its tutors from 1706 to 1711, and a 
member of the Corporation from 1711 to 1712. He 
must have had much personal attractiveness; for he 
was preferred by the Concord Church to Edward 
Holyoke, and Edward Holyoke was for thirty years one 
of Harvard's best Presidents, to describe whose virtues 
Mr. Quincy can hardly find language strong enough. 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 129 

William Whiting says that his ancestor "as a preacher 
was quiet, modest, gentle, and persuasive." This is 
probably true. Certainly he was not one of the new 
lights; rather a man of refinement and learning than a 
Boanerges. But could we have been with the crowd 
which filled the old church on his ordination day, we 
should have found nothing but cheer and hope, and 
satisfaction that a new minister had come, of whom 
all good things could be said, and for whom all good 
things might be prophesied. 

And for twenty-two years these expectations seemed 
to be fulfilled. In all that period not a line has been 
preserved which even hints at any feeling of dissatis- 
faction. We suspect, however, that the calm was 
deceitful. For in all those years, not only here, but 
throughout New England, the clouds of religious differ- 
ence and of theological bitterness were surely gather- 
ing. November 19, 1735, the storm burst out of what 
seemed a clear sky. On that day a council met at 
Concord. It had been summoned by the church to 
hear grievances relating to the misconduct of its 
pastor, Rev. John Whiting. The decision was, that 
the charges were true ; that the church had been too 
hasty in accepting its minister's confession of repent- 
ance and receiving him at once as a brother. It is 
pleased, however, to learn that he hath since behaved 
himself soberly and watchfully, and would not recom- 
mend his dismissal, but that he be put on probation 
till May. This misconduct spoken of was undoubtedly 
what was held to be, on occasions at least, too free 
use of wine. Sixteen months later the deacons were 
requested to see whether Mr. Whiting would join the 
town in calling another minister. To this he agreed ; 
and. May 16, 1737, the town voted, forty-one to thirty- 



130 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

three, to settle a colleague. But to this the church 
would not agree; and on the following October called 
another ex parte council. Rev. Joseph Sewall of the 
Old South Church has left a report so brief and racy that 
we cannot do better than reproduce it : " October 17, I 
set out for Concord with D. Henchman ; rained, lodged 
at Mr. Hancock's. Next day got to Concord; visited 
Mr. Whitin(»-. Mr. Hancock was chosen moderator. 
Council voted Mr. Whiting unworthy to be a minister 
of the Gospel, and advised the church to remove him 
from his office. After a public hearing, at which Mr. 
Whiting would not be present, as he had before refused 
to submit matters to the council. The crime, intem- 
perance, 21st day. The result was read in the Meeting 
House. I prayed. I hope God helped me. The church 
then voted agreeable to the advice of the Reverend 
Council, eighty-three yeas, eleven nays. My brother 
Cooper was their moderator. October 23 I preached 
at Concord a. m. from Eph. 5 : 18, Be not drunk with 
wine. Endeavored to bear testimony against the sin 
committed. October 24, I returned safe." 

No one can doubt that these charges were, to a 
degree, true. It is not to be believed that the good 
men who constituted the councils bore false witness. 
Besides, when the habits of the times are remembered, 
nothing appears more probable. Those were days 
when everybody drank, and freely. Consider the 
things that come down to us. Almost at the very time 
the town was dismissing its minister, its selectmen 
were paying for rum drunk by people who labored to 
save the South Bridge in a freshet. Mr. SewalFs own 
church furnished, every time he had a meeting of 
ministers at his house, so much wine that, if the 
brethren did not go home exhilarated, it was no fault 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 131 

of the church. Even an ordination could not be satis- 
factorily completed without an ample supply of ardent 
spirits, amounting in one case, an antiquarian friend 
tells me, to more than two barrels. Many things we 
consider appropriate were omitted at Puritan funerals, 
but not, I suspect, intoxicating drinks. Every time 
the minister visited a parishioner it was held to be 
courteous, as the phrase was, "to take something" 
Rev. William Emerson, writing to his wife, then in 
feeble health, expresses his gratitude that a friend 
sends her a bottle of wine as often as once in two or 
three days. Amid this universal use, or abuse, how 
could It be otherwise than that now and then the best 
intentioned should occasionally pass the limit of pre- 
scribed sobriety? So I admit the error of the good 
man, for good man he undoubtedly was, — an error 
perhaps more than once committed. 

But I do not feel convinced that he was in any 
general sense an intemperate person. You observe 
that the Council which condemned him was ex parte, 
and that the accused refused to appear before it. This 
fact of itself puts some doubt upon the verdict, or at 
any rate some limitations. Eighteen months later we 
get a glimpse of Mr. Whiting's own view of it It 
was April 9, 1739. Mr. Bliss had been settled just 
thirty-three days. « The Church of Christ in Concord " 
met, apparently for the first time under his ministry, 
to consider the affair of the late pastor, "-really to 
call him to account, because he had made no confession 
of his fault, and did not attend communion. A pretty 
harsh proceeding,. it would appear, for a voung man of 
twenty-four, only a month in his seat, to press upon 
a man of sixty, already sufficiently humiliated. To 
the committee sent to labor with him, Mr. Whiting 



132 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

made this temperate reply; "Friends, if the Church 
of Christ in Concord has anything to offer me, I desire 
that I may have it in writing and time to consider how 
to receive it. And I expect some satisfaction for the 
wrong which has been done (whether by any particular 
member, or the majority of the members present at my 
deposition) before I can (with due temper) sit down 
with the church at the ordinance of the Lord's Supper." 
The answer to this letter was his immediate deprivation 
of the privileges of a member of the church. At this 
late day it is impossible to decide what was the nature 
of the wrong which Mr. Whiting held had been inflicted 
upon him. Perhaps, in the language of the Council 
of 1735, he would have said that he had continued 
"to behave himself with sobriety and watchfulness," 
and was entitled to the lenity which that Council 
granted. Perhaps, with still more force, he might 
have complained that the church had proposed, and 
he had accepted, as the condition of peace, the appoint- 
ment of a colleague, and then had not kept its agree- 
ment. At any rate, whatever his reason, he does not 
speak as one conscious that he is under just condemna- 
tion. Nor must we forget that one third of the people 
of the town then and ever after stood by him, defended 
him, and to his death really continued under his 
ministry; and that in this third were some of the best 
people. His after life to all appearance was both 
kindly and blameless. Our theory would be, that Mr. 
Whiting was a man of means, given to hospitality, no 
ascetic, probably fond of the pleasures of the table, and 
one who occasionally passed the limit of wisdom in his 
indulgence of the customs of the times. 

We are the more inclined to this mild estimate, 
because it is clear that the whole story has not been 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 133 

told; and that there were other influences beside the 
personal habits of any man which helped to produce 
the result. We have already pointed out to what an 
extent the freedom granted by the Charter of William 
and Mary brought to the surface religious differences, 
which heretofore had been compelled to remain un- 
spoken. In the closing years of the seventeenth cen- 
tury these differences led to a struggle for the control 
of Harvard College. It ended in the defeat of the 
extreme Calvinists, and in the withdrawal from the 
Presidency, almost under compulsion, of Increase 
Mather, the leader of the extreme party. In 1701, 
Samuel Willard, who may be called a liberal orthodox 
man of the seventeenth century, took his place; and 
was succeeded in 1707 by John Leverett, who yet more 
fully represented the progressive spirit of the time. 
These things happened while John Whiting was in 
Cambridge, and it is clear on which side were his 
sympathies. So when the lines of divergence were 
being drawn, as in all those years they were, here and 
in every town in the Province, the party which repre- 
sented the old views could depend upon the opposition 
of the minister of Concord, in the pulpit and out of it. 
Then, in 1734, — the very year in which mutterings 
against Mr. Whiting began to be heard, — came Jon- 
athan Edwards and the great awakening at North- 
ampton. It was the first and the mightiest of the 
revivals. It spread like a conflagration. That awak- 
ening did much good, and no little harm. Often it 
replaced in the religious life scepticism and formality 
by faith and enthusiasm, though of a sombre cast. It 
fought, frequently with success, the growing vices of 
the times. But in every direction it divided ministers 
and people almost into hostile camps. In Concord it 



134 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

left bitter feelings, Y^hich it took forty years to banish. 
But in all its aspects, its high Calvinism, its intense 
and often vulgar excitement, its asceticism, and its 
tendency to minimize the value of early religious 
culture and of practical goodness, that awakening must 
have been repulsive to one of the disposition and 
training of the man who stood in this pulpit. He must 
have stiffly resisted its entrance into his parish. It is 
impossible to believe that this immovable opposition 
of the minister to the views of one wing of the church, 
and that the stronger, was not one of the reasons that 
led to his deposition. His habits might have furnished 
the occasion, but the cause was deep and fundamental. 
After his dismissal Mr. Whiting continued to live in 
Concord until his death, fourteen years later. May 4, 
1752, preaching much of the time to the minority of 
his people, who seceded in 1743. The inscription over 
his grave is a sort of post-mortem protest against the 
action of his opposers. "A gentleman of singular 
hospitality and generosity," it says, "who never 
detracted from the character of any man, and was a uni- 
versal lover of mankind." Wisely or unwisely, over 
all this story Shattuck sought to draw the veil of for- 
getfulncss. But that veil has been rent by the publica- 
tion of the Old South record. So justice to the man, 
if not fidelity to the truth of history, demanded that 
the story in all its aspects should be retold. 

When the town met six days after the removal by 
the church of its minister, it did not confirm the action 
of that body. It simply assessed fifty pounds to carry 
on public worship. But its further vote, "to allow 
Mr. John Whiting his salary in full untill the 1st day 
of May next," showed that in fact his work as minister 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 135 

of the town was over; and on March 7th following, 
without fruitless opposition from his friends, the vote 
of the church was quietly concurred in. The heat 
generated by Mr. Whiting's dismissal did not easily 
cool. It affected the life of the village for forty years. 
Even in respect to the matter of looking for a new 
minister there was a hitch. For on May 15, 1738, the 
town refused "to joyn with the church committee to 
agree with suitable gentlemen to supply the pulpit." 
Even when the church selected Daniel Bliss, thirty -two 
out of one hundred and two were found ready to vote 
against him. Nor did opposition cease with his call. 
Accusations were brought against him. The council 
originally called for his settlement had to be reinforced 
by two churches favorable to the pastor, and three 
favorable to the dissatisfied members ; and it was not 
until March 7, 1739, that he was finally ordained. 

Daniel Bliss, the new minister, was born in Spring- 
field, Massachusetts, January, 1715, and was therefore 
Only twenty-four years old when he came to what may 
properly be called the storm-tossed church of Concord. 
He had been educated at Yale College. His after 
course shows that he was in thorough sympathy with 
the theological opinions of Jonathan Edwards, and 
with the methods of church discipline adopted by that 
celebrated divine. In the church of Springfield, in 
which he was reared, he must have been a malcontent, 
as its minister. Rev. Robert Breck, was Edwards's ablest 
opponent in the Connecticut valley; and no doubt 
in such an atmosphere of controversy the religious 
convictions and feelings of the young man became 
fixed. As a church administrator, Mr. Bliss was 
clearly a believer in stringent discipline. We have 
already seen how stern were the demands which he 



136 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

made upon his predecessor. This same aggressive 
policy was continued by somebody, as appears by the 
town record of May 17, 1739: "It was propounded in 
Town Meeting, whether the Town will build a pew in 
the Meeting house for Mr. John Whiting and his 
family, in case they will accept of it as their seat in 
the meeting house (they quitting the pulpit and the 
pew built for the ministry)." Four months later, 
"the Selectmen were instructed to take care to build 
said pew as soon as conveniently they can at the 
Town cost." November 27, 1739, "It was voted that 
the article relating to Mr. John Whiting's sitting in 
the pulpit be dismissed," Finally, January 3, 1740, the 
much delayed pew is reported built, cost three pounds, 
ten shillings. Two years later there was no relenting. 
Town meeting. May 13, 1742, Article 2 reads thus: 
"To see if the Town will make some Reasonable 
allowance to Mr. John Whiting for his support in his 
declining years, considering his former good services 
and present Indisposition of Body. Passed in the 
negative. " 

How much Mr. Bliss had to do with the action of his 
adherents in public meeting may be a grave question. 
But the strictness of church discipline fell not alone 
upon the late minister, whose errors might seem to 
justify it, but equally upon such of his friends as 
doubted the justice of his sentence, and on that account 
withdrew from steady communion with their brethren. 
For on August 26, 1742, the church decided that "John 
Hosmer, John Wood, Samuel Miles, and Joshua Brooks 
are not to be allowed communion with this church 
untill they offer satisfaction suitable to their crimes." 
These were good men and true, one of them a deacon 
of the church. And what were their crimes ? Appar- 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 137 

ently a steadfast assertion that Mr. Whiting had been 
wronged, a protest against the extreme views which 
they heard upon election, and absence from the Lord's 
Supper. This discipline may not have been any stricter 
or harder than was common in the early days of the 
Colony. But it was harder than men were likely to 
endure patiently in the time of larger liberty which 
had come. And so it proved in Concord. The follow- 
ing anecdote would indicate that Mr. Bliss's personal 
bearing was grave and stern. Said one of the late 
Misses Blood to a descendant of Rev, William Emer- 
son, " You 're of the old stock. Your grandfather, — 
no, your great-grandfather was a minister of this town. 
He came after Mr. Bliss. My mother used to say that 
when he first came and visited them they were scared, 
the children were so afraid of Mr. Bliss; but Mr. 
Emerson spoke to them and said, ' What good children 
you are ! ' and my mother said it was like the sun 
coming out from a cloud." 

Yet beneath the forbidding manner a tender heart 
throbbed. In his diary he writes : " Our very dear son 
John died on the 16th of December, 1746, just about 
three quarters of an hour after nine o'clock in the 
evening. Of his age he was very much grown, had a 
white and ruddy countenance, a sweet and pleasant 
natural temper, of a quick wit and promising genius, 
on whom our hopes and affections were too much placed 
by raised expectations." Three years later, of his six 
months' old child he records, "a pleasant babe, a calm 
and quiet child, now, I hope, in endless rest." 

As a preacher, Mr. Bliss had striking qualities. He 
replaced the somewhat formal utterance of the pulpit 
of that day by the fiery earnestness of the revivalist. 
Accepting to the utmost the stern dogmas of Calvin, 



138 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

his soul was on fire. Woe was laid upon him if he did 
not preach the Gospel as he understood it. Sometimes 
he was moved to tears. Often he rose to solemn 
denunciation. His voice grew louder and louder, his 
gestures more extravagant, his calls to repentance more 
fearful and commanding. The effect upon his hearers 
was equally striking. An intense excitement ran 
through his audience, finding expression in groans 
and shouts and confusion, which offended and made 
hostile those of a calmer temperament. Thus Mr. 
Bliss by his faults, and possibly still more by his 
virtues, had the quality of character which sharpened 
and made permanent divisions already existing in the 
parish. Had he been a man of gentler make and 
quieter ways, with less enthusiasm and a more fully 
rounded judgment, things might have gone differently. 
As it was, he did the work he was fitted to do, and with 
no slack hand. He built up the church with the great 
body of earnest and susceptible persons. He cut off 
from the church many just and righteous persons, 
who could not find God either in the whirlwind or 
the fire. 

John Whiting and Daniel Bliss were the antipodes 
of each other. They dwelt in different theological 
hemispheres with a different climate. John Whiting, 
bating his fault, whose reality and extent we cannot 
accurately determine, might almost have been the 
original of one of those rectors whose portraits George 
Eliot has so admirably painted. He was undoubtedly 
a cultivated gentleman, calm and refined in his ideas 
and manners, fond of the good things of this life, an 
optimist, who believed that through a Christian educa- 
tion we best become children of God, and reflecting his 
optimism in his peaceful, cheering, and no doubt some- 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 139 

■what formal utterances. Such at any rate is the 
picture of him which rises in my imagination. Daniel 
Bliss was like him in none of these things. He was a 
man of a thoroughly unblemished character, devoted 
to his ministry with a rare fidelity, one who believed 
that all his flock were by nature children of wrath, 
who had no faith that salvation could be attained by 
Christian culture, however faithful, but only by a stroke 
of conviction sharp and clear, like a flash of lightning 
darting out of the heavens. His whole aim, certainly 
in the beginning of his preaching, was to produce just 
such crises in the lives of his people. Ease, the com- 
forts of life, the refinements of literature, in his case, 
retired into the background. I suspect that, if he 
could come back and walk the streets of Concord to- 
day with the mien he had, we should mark the grave, 
stern, sad, almost sour cast of countenance which we 
see stamped so often upon the faces of many of those 
early God-fearing and God-serving Puritans. When 
he died at fifty, just when more peace had come into his 
parish than he had known before, no doubt it was the 
sharp sword which had worn out the scabbard, — the 
fiery soul that had been too much for his poor body. 

The divisions which had marked the settlement did 
not decrease with the passage of the months. They 
were the result of fundamental differences both of taste 
and opinion rather than of personal bitterness. The 
breach was widened by the coming of George Whitefield, 
who preached in Concord, stirred the people greatly, 
intensified the earnestness and deepened the convic- 
tions of the young preacher, with whom he rejoiced, 
and whom he pronounced to be "a child of God." At 
about this time Whitefield made his attack upon 
Harvard College as a seat of ungodliness. The only 



140 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

ground for it seems to have been, that, in the progress 
of events, the College had ceased to be chiefly a semi- 
nary for the training of ministers, and had become a 
place of general intellectual culture. But whatever 
may have been the merits or demerits of this con- 
troversy, it undoubtedly awakened a great excitement 
throughout the Province of Massachusetts. In many 
quarters friendship for Mr. Whitelield changed into 
open hostility. Scores of ministers signed a protest 
against his statements. Rev. John Hancock, of the 
neighboring town of Lexington, refused to admit him 
to his pulpit. The flames in Concord were fanned 
to greater heat. Union, before difficult, now became 
impossible. 

The internal history of the parish, from the time Mr. 
Bliss received his call, in 1738, to the time when the 
General Court, in 1745, gave his opponents liberty 
to establish a second church, has never been clearly 
written, and now it cannot be. But they must have 
been years of great confusion and strife. Life could 
not have been stagnant and dull. The entry made by 
Dr. Joseph Lee, who now first appears on the scene, in 
its very incoherence is probably the more descriptive 
and accurate : " More Prayers and more negatives. 
I am weary of writing the Prayers of our friends and 
townsmen that are oppressed and distressed in body 
and mind as well as estates, and hard speeches and 
cruel railings and all the arguments that I could make 
use of failed. Yea, my skill failed me, and I had no 
more to do for them but to Rite negatives, that I had 
no heart nor hand in, until they petitioned the General 
Court, who would hear the Prayers, and they could 
digest the Banns and Judge impartially in the matter." 
By 1742 and 1743 things had come to such a pass that 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 141 

recourse was had to that great remedy in those days for 
parish difficulties, "a venerable Council." Three such 
councils were held ; one ex parte council called by the 
church; one of the same kind summoned by the 
aggrieved brethren; and a mutual council, of whose 
members ten were supposed to be favorable to the 
minister and four to his opponents. This last clearly 
sought to be impartial, and to close up the breach. It 
found something to blame on both sides. It held that 
Mr. Bliss had been incautious and extravagant in his 
language and in his statement of doctrines ; and advised 
him " to be humble under a sense of having given so 
much ground to many of his Christian brethren to be 
grieved and offended at him, and that he make a 
suitable acknowledgment of the things wherein he 
was blameworthy. . . . And now, as to the aggrieved 
brethren, we advise them, that upon his giving Chris- 
tian satisfaction as above they return and set quietly 
and peacefully under the ministry of their Reverend 
Pastor. We fear," they add, "that corrupt principles 
contrary to the Doctrines have been and are espoused 
by some persons in this place, which have occasioned 
their stumbling at some truths which have been deliv- 
ered them." It is impossible to conceive of a decision 
more absolutely fair and impartial. Mr. Bliss's errors 
were those of a man both of a dogmatic and an enthu- 
siastic temper, who gave himself up unguardedly to 
extempore speech, while his opponents had certainly 
lost faith in some things that had formerly been 
accepted. 

Shattuck, in his history of the town, furnishes most, 
if not all, of the materials necessary for a full under- 
standing of the points of difference between the parties. 
But his account is so encumbered by unimportant 



142 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

details, indeed the complaints of the aggrieved are so 
encumbered by such details, that the ordinary reader 
does not grasp the situation. If, however, you care- 
fully examine, you will find that all that is really of 
weight can be reduced to five heads or divisions. Two 
of these are theological, two refer to rules of ecclesias- 
tical order, and one only has a personal bearing. Con- 
sider the theological questions. The first concerns the 
doctrine of election. Mr. Bliss has left his own view 
on record. "The offer of the Covenant of Grace," he 
writes on the Church book, "is to all to whom the 
Gospel is preached, and all are laid under the obliga- 
tions of it. Yet I suppose and preach that this Cove- 
nant is made in Christ for the elect only. Yet those 
(who are not elect) for not accepting the Covenant of 
Grace, when the Lord enters into it with men, I sup- 
pose and always hold them to be liable to a double 
damnation." That is, Mr. Bliss was a Calvinist, and 
one such as we rarely see now, and believed with John 
Calvin that God predestined only a few to be saved; 
while his opponents were Arminians, and held that 
the Covenant of Grace could be accepted by all. The 
second point of theological difference was this, Mr. 
Bliss maintained that no soul could be saved, or counted 
to be truly in the Christian fold, which had not passed 
through a process of conversion so sharp and distinct 
that it was fully conscious both of its character and 
time. Thus he accepted the revival method as essential 
at all times and with all persons. On the contrary, his 
aggrieved brethren held that the process of Christian 
education was the usual and the safe method of salva- 
tion, and the revival method the exceptional one. You 
observe that these divisions hardly touched any ques- 
tions under discussion by Christian bodies to-day; and 



THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 143 

that the members of both parties would be admitted 
into any church in our Commonwealth. 

If we turn now to the breaches of ecclesiastical order, 
we shall find that the first accusation was, that he had 
preached in other parishes, not only without invitation 
from the pastors, but contrary to their wish. This is 
what is meant by the saying, "that he was not in 
charity with many neighboring churches." This seems 
a small offence to us. But under the old New England 
method it was a great offence. Witness this story of 
Dr. Osgood of Medford, which was told me by a father 
of the faith, long since passed to his reward. "An 
early Methodist had made arrangements to preach in 
Medford. As a matter of courtesy, he called on Dr. 
Osgood to apprise him of his intention. ' No, you are 
not going to preach,' was the surprising salutation. 
'I am paid 1333.33 J to do the preaching of Medford, 
and I propose to do the whole of it. ' ' But, ' said his 
astonished visitor, ' I have engaged a hall for Wednes- 
day evening.' ' I shall be there and preach,' was the 
Doctor's reply; and being a masterful man, he was as 
good as his word." Under this state of feeling, that 
Mr. Bliss should have, at the invitation of his own 
mother and friends, preached at Springfield, was counted 
a serious breach of church order; and the offence was 
repeated elsewhere. The second accusation was that 
he had introduced into his pulpit unauthorized and 
uneducated exhorters, to the great scandal of the 
Gospel. This action had the sanction of Whitefield's 
authority, and apparently that of Jonathan Edwards, 
but was not in accordance with the New England feel- 
ing of that period. The personal complaint of hasty 
and unbecoming language, and of statements incon- 
sistent with each other, may be passed over in silence, 



144 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

as they are natural, if not essential, to extempore ad- 
dress delivered under excitement. Mr. Bliss accepted 
the decision of the Council without protest, and made 
all proper acknowledgment of error, showing how little 
his conduct had its source in personal pride, and how 
much in deep-seated convictions. And had the ever- 
widening gap had its source in individual feeling this 
dignity and moral sincerity might have closed it ; but 
division was inevitable. Two councils had indeed 
advised it. Every step toward it was however marked 
by difficulty. September 4, 1744, " The Town refused 
to free those who had seceded from Mr. Bliss's ministry 
from their proportion of tax, or to let them worship in 
town hall." May 16, 1745, it "appointed a Committee 
to oppose the petition to be freed from the proportion 
of Mr. Bliss salary." It also "refused to help the 
seceders to build a meeting house, or to grant the 
Town house, or to pay for their preaching." So these 
people appealed from the church and the town, and 
venerable councils, to the Great and General Court, 
which, January 19, 1745, wisely decreed a separation, 
freeing the aggrieved from all ministerial charges, from 
June, 1743, since which time they had maintained wor- 
ship among themselves. Thus a second church was 
regularly organized in Concord. Its real name was the 
West Church. But in derision it was called, from its 
place of meeting, the Black Horse Church. About a 
third of the population appear to have belonged to it. 
According to Mr. Shattuck this church continued to 
live — largely under the charge of Mr. Whiting — 
about fourteen years. Then most of its members, who 
still belonged to Concord, went back to the old church. 
Some of the reasons are obvious. The death of Mr. 
Whiting in 1752 removed the one great personal 



THE CHUKCH IN CONCORD. 145 

obstacle to union. The setting off of the precinct of 
Lincoln early in the forties, and its incorporation into 
a town in 175-4, took into another municipality several 
of his strong supporters. Death no doubt removed 
others. The copy of the petition of Job Brooks, Jr., 
dated July 17, 1746, clearly points to the existence of 
a church at Lincoln before that date. The list of 
members made a year later clearly contains Concord 
names; while in May, 1751, the church voted "to 
receive any member of the Church of Concord who 
should be dismissed." So, with this h'aven of safety 
near at hand for all discontented souls or tender con- 
sciences, the expense of the West Church must have 
seemed to be needless. Finally, we may venture the 
suggestion that Mr. Bliss himself, like Whitefield, 
had softened his own methods, even if he did not modify 
his opinions. During the separation nothing occurred 
in the old parish needing to be noted except the adop- 
tion in 1749 of a new church covenant. The old one 
was undogmatic. The new one became distinctly so, 
by stating that an excellent compendium of Faith and 
Practice was to be found in the Shorter Catechism of 
the Assembly of Divines. 

March 10, 1764, Whitefield made a second visit to 
Concord. The next morning being Sunday, Mr. Bliss 
by his request preached. The sermon made so power- 
ful an impression upon him that Mr. Whitefield said 
"that had he studied a whole lifetime he could not 
have preached such a sermon." Mr. Bliss had reached 
the zenith. His intellectual powers and his spiritual 
vigor were at their best. Most of his opponents had 
been reconciled. At peace now with his neighbors, his 
own church seemingly united, the religious life of 
his people, if less exalted, perhaps more profound and 

10 



146 THE CHURCH IN CONCORD. 

trustworthy, might he not look forward to many years 
of tranquil and useful life ? But it was the last bright 
flash of the flame before extinction. Consumption 
claimed him, and two months later he died. We have 
already sketched his character. A man of beliefs dark 
and sombre, but genuine to the core, a man of earnest- 
ness such as is vouchsafed to few of earth's children, a 
man gifted with that divine quality we call eloquence, 
we may accept the eulogy of his successor and call him 
" a flame of lire, " — yes, and kindled by a coal from the 
altar. 



THE STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS 
OWNERS. 

Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum, 
February 1, 1883. 

IN a little sketch of Concord, which I wrote for 
Drake's History of Middlesex County, I alluded 
to a beautifully rounded little eminence filling the 
triangle made by the junction of the Sudbury and 
Assabet Rivers. One point of this triangle ends in a 
miniature promontory, known to children of our gener- 
ation as Egg Rock. The hill itself was called by the 
early settlers plain North Hill. Since their day it 
has been variously termed Lee's Hill, Barrett's Hill, 
and Hurd's Hill, while in recent times a not very suc- 
cessful effort has been made to restore the Indian 
name, Nawshawtuck. 

This little hill, and the woodlands, meadows, and 
arable land attached to it, make a tract of about four 
hundred acres, bounded chiefly by the two branches of 
the Concord River. It constitutes one of the few farms 
in Concord which very nearly retain their original 
character. Pieces of land have been added to it; 
pieces of land have been subtracted from it; but, in 
the bulk of it, the farm is what it was when, in the 
second division of the lands, two hundred and twenty- 
eight years ago, it fell to the lot of Major Simon 
Willard, I venture to ask attention to the story of 
this farm and its owners. The subject must have some 



148 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

attractions for Concord men and women. The annals 
themselves show in what a wonderful manner, in the 
lapse of time, width and variety of genuine human 
interest get attached to one little parcel of ground. 

We begin with the first owners, the Indians. A 
powerful tribe once occupied the whole region now 
known as Middlesex and Essex Counties, and could 
boast three thousand warriors. A mysterious plague 
in 1612 swept off nine tenths of these people. " They 
died in heaps," says the old chronicler. "The bones 
and skulls in their several places of habitation made 
such a spectacle that it seemed a new-found Golgotha." 
Then their chief, Nanepashemit, whom the historian 
styles "the renowned," moved from Lynn to Medford, 
probably for greater safety from hereditary foes. There 
he built a curious fort, of poles thirty feet long, driven 
into the ground in a great circle. But there his enemies 
found him and slew him; and there he was buried. 
His wife. Squaw Sachem, succeeded to his authority, 
and first perhaps in Massachusetts practically asserted 
and maintained woman's rights. With a sagacity 
worthy of a Christian potentate she confirmed her 
power by a second marriage with Webbacowet, whom 
the old Puritan, with no surplus of politeness, termed 
"the pow-wow, witch, priest, sorcerer, and chirurgeon 
of the tribe." What further we know about this 
woman is told by the Massachusetts Colonial Records, 
where it appears that for a mere pittance she sold land 
to the settlers of Concord, Cambridge, and Charles- 
town, and gave to one Jotham Gibbons the tract of 
land near the Mystic ponds, which she had reserved for 
her own use, to acknowledge (as she expressed it in 
her deed) "the many kindnesses she had received from 
his father, and for the tender love and respect which 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 149 

she bore to the son, and desired that these be recorded 
in perpetual remembrance of this thing." Across the 
centuries no more touching eulogium has come to us 
than this simple testimony of the rude forest queen to 
the Christian charity and justice Of Captain Edward 
Gibbons, of Boston, and of plain Jotham Gibbons, his 
son. In 1641 appears also a vote by which Cambridge 
is enjoined to give Squaw Sachem one coat every 
winter ; and the next year another vote by which she 
was to receive from the same source, as a sort of primi- 
tive back pay, four coats and thirty-five bushels of 
corn. In 1644 she and four other chiefs put them- 
selves, their subjects and property, under the jurisdic- 
tion of the Colony. On this occasion sundry grave 
questions and simple answers are duly entered on the 
public records. For entire honesty of statement we 
commend to your attention the reply made to require- 
ment No. 3, which ran thus: "Not to do any unne- 
cessary worke on the Sabath day." To which the 
straightforward savages said, "It is easy to them. 
They have not much to do any day. And they can well 
take their ease that day." She died in 1662, old and 
blind. 

Of this broken tribe a feeble remnant under a sub- 
chief, Tahattawan, lived in Concord. Probably in all 
they did not number a hundred. For Higginson tells 
us, that "after the plague few Sagamores had three 
hundred subjects, some but fifteen, some only two." 
Their home was on the farther side of the stream from 
Egg Rock to Clamshell Bluffs. Behind was land for 
their rude husbandry; before, the river, which, as Mr. 
Hale has said of some other poor folks, was all the 
pork and beef barrel they had; on the hill, possibly a 
little fort or stockade. No doubt they were glad to 



150 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

exchange land, which they could not occupy, for 
knives, hoes, and cloth, of which they were in sore 
need. The rest of their story is quickly told. They 
became Christians; pathetically asking "not to be 
moved far from the English, lest they should forget to 
pray." In their new home at Littleton they lived 
peaceably and honestly forty years. Then King 
Philip's War broke out. No chapter in our town 
history so shameful as that which tells of the treatment 
of this helpless people. By order of the General Court 
they were removed back to Concord. Only one man, 
John Hoar, rose above the prejudice and fear of the 
hour. (I presume that his place was on Lexington 
Street, where Mr. Alcott's house stands.) He per- 
mitted the poor exiles to put their wigwams on his 
grounds, took charge of them, employed them. There 
were but fifty-eight of them; only twelve were men, 
and these unarmed. "They were living," as Major 
Gookin reports, "very soberly and quietly and industri- 
ously." But neither their weakness nor their good 
conduct could save them from persecution. 

The exigencies of the time had brought to the surface 
one Captain Moseley, a soldier of desperate courage, 
and an old West Indian buccaneer. The superstitious 
red men viewed him with a peculiar terror, for they 
said that he was a man with two heads. The fact was, 
he wore — what in New England in those days was not 
common — a wig. This wig, when he came into an 
engagement, he was wont to hang on a bush, and to 
keep, as the Indians affirmed, another head upon his 
shoulders, and to fight just as well as if he had the 
ordinary stock. Any one familiar with Cooper's novels 
will readily recall an incident in one of his Leather- 
stocking Tales, which was probably suggested by this 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 151 

old tradition. This Captain Moseley had under him a 
company in which there were no less than twelve 
pirates, pardoned to fight Indians. He had signalized 
his promotion by an act of cruel injustice to the Chris- 
tian Indians of Marlboro. To him certain of the 
townspeople sent secretly. He came. It was mid- 
winter. With the active sympathy of many of the citi- 
zens, it is to be feared, with the passive consent of 
most is certain, he snatched these poor people from the 
hands of Mr. Hoar, scattering their little properties, 
and hurried them to the bleak shores of Deer Island, 
there to spend the bitter winter and the inclement 
spring with no shelter but their tents, and no food but 
a scanty supply of corn, and the clams they dug from 
the sea-shore. It seems incredible, that within two 
months of this outrage, one of these very Indians, 
Thomas Dublit, volunteered to go on a dangerous mis- 
sion to the hostile tribes to endeavor to secure the 
release of Mrs, Rowlandson. For this end he and 
another Indian made three expeditions. On the fourth 
he was accompanied by Mr. John Hoar, who succeeded, 
apparently with no little peril, in redeeming her, 
bringing her first to Concord and then to Boston. How 
many of these Nashobah Indians ever came back from 
their cruel exile, neither history nor tradition tells; 
but in 1734 only one was left. Thus the story ends of 
the first owners of our beautiful hill, girded by the 
quiet rivers. Their ample fields we occupy, and at 
their hands our fathers received nothing but gifts and 
friendly treatment. 

The first white owner of the farm was Major Simon 
Willard. Not unlikely three quarters of Concord-born 
people now living do not know who Simon Willard 
was. Then it is time they did know. For infant 



152 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

Concord owed more to him, perhaps, than to any other 
single person. He it was who selected the spot on 
which the town stands, and by his influence with the 
natives promoted its peaceable possession. He was 
one of the little band who made that painful march 
through thickets, and Avatery swamps, and unknown 
woods, which the old Puritan annalist so graphically 
describes. And he it was that in the dark and difficult 
days of the first settlement filled every post and per- 
formed every duty. Probably in all those early years 
he was its chief selectman. Certainly for eighteen 
years he was its clerk, and for fifteen years its Deputy 
at the General Court. From the beginning he was the 
military commander; and with two othci-s made the 
legal tribunal before which all cases between man and 
man of moderate importance were tried. Last but not 
least, to him was intrusted the delicate office of selling 
strong water. For, however strange it may look to 
us, rum selling was then committed to men in high 
standing, and was itself almost a certificate of good 
character. 

Nor was his work and usefulness confined within 
this single town. Possibly he was the most influential 
man in the county. All through his later years he 
held the office of Assistant. Now in Massachusetts in 
the seventeenth century an Assistant was a person with 
high and varied duties. In the General Court he was a 
Senator. To the Governor he was a Councillor. In 
the administration of law he was a member of the only 
Supreme Judicial Court of the period. To all these 
honors and labors Simon Willard was called for twenty- 
two successive years, and just as he died received the 
largest vote given for any one for his twenty-third 
term. Add now that in 1641 to him and two others 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 153 

was given the whole charge of trade with the Indians; 
that in 1655 he was promoted to the command of all 
the military force of Middlesex County ; that in almost 
innumerable cases he was appointed to settle bounds 
between individuals and towns, and in one case 
between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and adjust 
differences with Indians, whom the fathers, like their 
children, were not indisposed to oppress ; — and you 
see that he was a notable man and trusted, not simply 
here, but in all the region about. 

The facts of his life are simple. He was born in 
1605, at Horsemonden, Kent, where a descendant found 
the ancient church in which he was christened, and a 
magnificent oak, more than three hundred years old, 
under whose shade he must have played. When he 
was four years old his mother died, when eleven, his 
father, leaving his son a good patrimony. At twenty- 
nine years he was married, in comfortable circum- 
stances, with a promising business. Then, like many 
another, for conscience' sake, he left all. At Cam- 
bridge, by the Charles River, he bought a farm, built a 
house, and began to trade with the natives. A year 
passed, when he sold his property, turned his back 
on the comparatively settled life of Cambridge, and 
plunged into the wilderness to help plant a new town, 
there to live twenty-four years. His biographer inti- 
mates that the warm attachment which had grown up 
between him and Rev. Peter Bulkeley led to this 
change of plan. July, 1658, the selectmen of Lan- 
caster, feeling the need of a ruling mind, thought 
"meet to order a letter of invitation to be sent to Major 
Simon Willard to come and inhabit among us." A 
similar invitation in a previous year had been declined. 
But eight months before this last call Mr. Bulkeley 



154 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

had closed his career. Perhaps that weakened the tie 
which held him. At any rate he accepted the invita- 
tion, and sold his farm. For twelve years he was the 
controlling mind in Lancaster. Then he moved to 
Groton, where his son was minister. There King 
Philip's War found him. At seventy, with all the fire 
and vigor of youth, he took command of the Middlesex 
soldiers, trying, with a scanty force, alas ! to protect 
the wide, helpless frontier. When Captain Thomas 
Wheeler and Lieutenant Simon Davis with a little 
band from Concord and the vicinity were surprised at 
Brookfield and besieged, and in the last extremity, it 
was their old neighbor who rode up with his troopers 
and friendly Indians and rescued them. March 14, 
1676, while he was absent on service, his own house at 
Groton and sixty-five others were burned. One month 
later he lay dead in his new home at Charlestown, 
worn out, I doubt not, by the burden and grief of that 
dreadful war, too heavy for shoulders that had already 
laid on them the weight of seventy-one years. The 
first European who occupied the farm on the hill was a 
noble specimen of a noble race. Weighty in judgment, 
versatile, trusty, of kindly temper, of indomitable 
industry, he filled well almost every conceivable post. 

His successor was a very different pattern of a man, 
— much more entertaining, I suspect, much less useful. 
The first glimpse we have of him is in the journal of 
one John Dunton, an Englishman, who made a trip 
through New England in the latter half of the seven- 
teenth century, visiting Lynn on his way to Salem. 
Li that journal he records: "About 2 of the Clock I 
reached Capt. Marshall's house, which is half way 
between Boston and Salem. I staid to refresh nature 
with a pint of sack and a good fowl. Capt. Marshall 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 155 

was a hearty old gentleman, formerly one of Oliver's 
soldiers, upon which he very much valued himself. 
He had all the history of the Civil War at his fin- 
' ger's ends, and if we may believe him, Oliver did hardly 
anything that was considerable without his assistance ; 
and if I 'd have staid as long as he 'd have talked, he 'd 
spoiled my ramble to Salem." This Captain Thomas 
Marshall came to Lynn in 1635. But when the civil 
war between the Parliament and the King broke out, 
he returned to England, entered Cromwell's army, 
became a captain, and came back to New England 
covered with glory, a fact of which he was apparently 
quite sensible. A little before, Joseph Armitage built 
on the Saugus River one of the first taverns erected 
in the Colony. By a curious freak the sign of this 
tavern, an anchor, was painted a bright blue, and the 
place was familiarly known as "The Blew Anchor." 
This Blew Anchor Captain Marshall bought and kept 
many years. He must have been a person of some 
respectability, as the town of Lynn elected him no less 
than six times its Deputy to the General Court, and in 
the Indian wars put its soldiers under his command. 
He must, however, have had some weak spots, if we 
are to judge from his experience as a magistrate, 
entitled to perform the marriage ceremony. The 
Massachusetts Records state that on the 18th day of 
October, 1659, "Captain Marshall, of Lynn, was 
empowered to join in marriage such persons in Lynn 
as might desire his services, they being published 
according to lawe." But fifteen years after quite a 
different record appears. It says : " The Court being 
informed that Captain Thomas Marshall hath of late 
married some persons not legally published, on exami- 
nation of the case, finds that he was abused by misin- 



156 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

formation of some, and by his own overmuch credulity, 
and that he hath exceeded the commission by marrying 
people not living in the town, which might be occa- 
sioned by some mistake as to the extent of the commis- 
sion, which the Court hath now more clearly explicated 
to prevent the like inconvenience ; and judge mcete to 
discharge the said Captain Marshall from officiating in 
that employment." What induced Captain Marshall 
to come to Concord, it is impossible to say. But come 
he did, and on the 29th of November, 1659, purchased 
Major Willard's farm for .£210. But as nine days after 
the date of this deed he received authority "to sell 
strong water to travellers and other meet provisions," 
we exercise the Yankee privilege of guessing that he 
hoped to turn an honest penny by selling strong water 
at the place which Major Willard had established. 
Whether he was disappointed in his expectations, or 
was overcome by the temptation to make <£30, we 
cannot guess. But for some reason in sixteen months 
he sold the place to Henry Woodis, or Woodhouse, for 
£240, and so passes out from Concord life. The last 
appearance of this veteran of which we have any 
account was as a witness in a trial about an old mill 
privilege in 1683. Six years after, he died, aged 
seventy-three. This third owner of the farm was 
evidently a good deal of a character. The title, which 
clung to him, of the jolly landlord of the Blew Anchor, 
was significant. The traveller describes him as a 
hearty old gentleman, full of innocent vanity. The 
town historian calls him a fine old Englishman, who 
kept open doors to all comers. Even the Committee of 
the General Court softens a little, and attributes his 
shortcomings to nothing worse than innocent credulitj*. 
One cannot but think that this easy-going and probably 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 157 

rosy-cheeked publican found the grave Puritans of 
Concord uncongenial companions, and gladly got back 
to the Blew Anchor and to its cheery customers, who 
would listen to his long yarns about half fabulous 
exploits. 

Henry Woodis was the first owner of Lee's Hill 
whom Shattuck records. Yet he is the very one of 
whom we know the least. He came to New England 
in 1650, so Savage affirms. He was in Concord in 
1654, for in March of that year he voted in a minority 
of five against a plan to divide the town into quarters. 
Where he lived then, and what land he occupied, is not 
clear. But of the three hundred and one acres which 
he bought in 1661 of Thomas Marshall probably only 
two hundred and forty-three are in the present farm. 
Yet in 1699 he owned three hundred and fifty acres, 
and no new purchase of land is recorded. May we 
not fairly infer that before 1661 he already had a 
hundred acres of his own, and in the same region ? 
Five years after his purchase, his house was burned, 
and his only son, an infant of a few weeks, perished in 
the flames ; and so it was fated that he should be at once 
the first and the last of his name in the town.^ 

During his fifty years' life here he filled some honor- 
able positions. In King Philip's War he was first 
Quartermaster, then Lieutenant. For three years, from 
1690 to 1692, he was Representative. In 1684 he was 
one of a committee appointed to extinguish the Indian 
title to the new grant, — now Acton. In 1699, an old 

1 Tradition adds that he lost in the great Loudon fire the pre- 
ceding September two houses more. I do not think that the build- 
ing he lost in Concord was the one erected by Simon Willard, but 
one he himself had built and occupied before he purchased the 
great farm of Thomas Marshall. 



158 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

man, he sold his farm to his son-in-law, Joseph Lee, 
reserving, however, one fifth for his own use. Two 
years later he died. Mr. Woodis was evidently a 
person of respectable ability and character. But he 
left no such impress on our history as did his prede- 
cessors. Yet he was more essentially a Concord man. 
Few, if any, of their descendants remain in the town, 
while many, if not most of the old families, have a few 
drops of Henry Woodis's blood in their veins. Lee, 
Cheney, Estabrook, Dakin, Davis, Wood, and Heywood 
are the names of some of the families into which his 
daughters and granddaughters entered by marriage. 

The tragical death of his only son left Mr. Woodis 
without an heir to his name ; and his estate, partly by 
purchase and partly as the dowry of his daughter, fell 
into the hands of the Lees, by whom it was held one 
hundred and thirteen years. Of this family we have 
now to speak. 

Joseph Lee, the first, was the son of a settler of 
Ipswich, whose true name, tradition says, was Leigh, 
and not Lee, as we have it. How, in those days, — 
when practically Ipswich was as far from Concord as 
Chicago is now, — Joseph Lee and Mary Woodis met 
at all, and especially met frequently enough to con- 
template matrimony, is the problem. But they did, 
and in 1678 were married. The Ipswich records say 
that Mr. Lee did not move to Concord till 1(396, and 
then probably to relieve his father-in-law of the burden 
of his great farm. After Mr. Woodis's death he occu- 
pied the portion of the farm he had obtained, apparently 
making no effort to reclaim the fifth which had been 
bequeathed to the fourth daughter, Mrs. Dakin. Old 
age stole upon him, and in 1716 he gave his son 
Joseph one hundred and fifty acres, and his other 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 159 

children the rest of his estate, and then died. That is 
all history or tradition records. 

Joseph Lee, the second, was a physician. More 
ambitious than his father, he early set to work to unite 
the fragments of this grand farm. He purchased of 
Elinor Dakin the fifth which his grandfather had 
alienated; then his brother's and sister's portions, 
finally adding, in 1730, two adjoining strips. So the 
two hundred and forty-three acres of Thomas Marshall, 
which Mr. Woodis had made three hundred and fifty, 
became in his grandson's charge three hundred and 
seventy-five. 

Joseph Lee, third of the name in Concord, physician, 
Tory, had by the middle of the century again united 
the farm. By what heirship, by what purchases, is not 
clear. That he practised his profession steadily is not 
probable. On the contrary, the numerous accessions of 
land which he made outside his farm, and outside the 
town, indicate that he had large business transactions 
and achieved wealth. Ever after he was twenty-eight, 
until the commencement of the Revolutionary War, his 
time and interest must have been a good deal absorbed 
by church quarrels. He was one of those who seceded 
from the Eirst Parish, and formed what was called, in 
derision, the Black Horse Church, because its meetings 
were held in the hall of a tavern, near our present 
library, which had for a sign a black horse. This 
breach having been healed by the death of Rev. Mr. 
Bliss, another quarrel, more personal and bitter than 
the last, broke out. Dr. Lee sought admission to the 
church, and was repeatedly refused. Nine church 
members and others not of the church, under the title 
of aggrieved brethren, espoused his cause. What with 
interminable church meetings and innumerable church 



160 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

committees and councils, mutual or otherwise, they 
kept the church and themselves in a turmoil seven 
years. The cause of this division was not, as we might 
suppose, doctrinal. A somewhat tattered document 
shows that the cause was practical and personal. This 
asserts that Dr. Lee had oppressed widows and orphans 
hy undue delays in settling accounts and by exorbitant 
charges; that he gave way to his passions, vilely 
reflecting on his pastor; that he theatened and bully- 
ragged a committee who had done nothing but give him 
sound advice. All of which, as an ex parte statement, 
may be taken with a grain of salt. In the Revolution, 
the doctor, having much to lose, shrank from civil war, 
upheld the existing powers, in short, was a Tory. This 
was natural, and perhaps might have been excused. 
But that he stole down to Cambridge and betrayed 
secrets to the enemy could not be overlooked. To this 
he pleaded guilty. For this he was confined fourteen 
months to his farm, glad, no doubt, to escape with so 
light a penalty. One other trace of him I find in a 
letter of condolence to Stephen Hosmer, in which he 
speaks of himself as confined and deprived of the privi- 
lege of attending the funeral of a friend. Many curious 
traditions about Dr. Lee still linger, whose authenticity 
is not perhaps perfectly clear. One states that he had 
an apartment in which he kept a fire burning thirty 
years, thinking that he was on the eve of discovering 
the philosopher's stone. Another ascribes to him a 
violent and upireasonable temper, and tells of a certain 
valuable lot of ship timber, which he refused to sell, 
and suffered to rot upon the ground, because he could 
not obtain his price. Despite his troubles, and despite 
any faults of temper, he lived to a good old age, dying 
at eighty years, in 1797, and over his remains a stone 



STOKY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 161 

was reared which ascribed to him pretty much all 
of the Christian virtues. Dr. Lee has made a perma- 
nent impression upon the history of the town. He has 
made a permanent impression upon its very soil. For 
I think that the name Lee's Hill will outlive all its 
successors. I have no faith that he was one who would 
have had a tranquil life in any community, or have 
been popular. I picture him as somewhat selfish, a 
man of set opinions, and not a little resolute and 
pugnacious in the assertion of them. 

It was while Dr. Lee was confined to his farm that 
one of the most interesting episodes in Concord history 
took place. I refer to the sojourn of Harvard College. 
When we consider how, sooner or later, everything 
seems to appear in this ancient town; that it first 
sheltered the Provincial Congress ; that in 1786 it ran 
a narrow chance of being itself the State capital ; that 
for the space of a few months it was, six years later, 
actually that; that in our own day it has been the 
home of two such oppositcs as the State prison and the 
School of Philosophy, — it may seem to be in the order 
of events that our great institution of learning should 
sojourn awhile amid its tranquil scenery. At any 
rate, it happened that when, by the siege of Boston, 
Cambridge became one armed camp, Harvard College 
was transported to Concord. The professors and 
students were scattered through the village, — twelve 
of the latter finding shelter in the venerable mansion 
of Dr. Lee. One wonders what sort of an impression 
this advent made upon the town. Here was a quiet 
village, quiet then beyond all our capacity in these 
days of railroads, telegraphs, and telephones even to 
comprehend. Within a mile of the church there could 
not have been more than seventy-five houses. To this 



162 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

little hamlet came one hundred and forty-three students, 
with the five, six, or ten professors or tutors, with 
library and apparatus, with increased social life and 
excitement. Five hundred students billeted upon the 
modern town for a year would hardly be an equal 
burden. It is interesting to see what distinguished 
men were the result of this somewhat vagrant course of 
instruction. In the little class of forty-two, which 
graduated in 1776, I note the names of Christopher 
Gore, one of the ablest of the Governors of Massachu- 
setts ; Samuel Sewall, Chief Justice of the same State ; 
Royall Tyler, who combined in himself the somewhat 
incongruous distinctions of Chief Justice of Vermont 
and author of the first American drama which ever 
appeared upon the stage. To these might be added 
two or three others scarcely less distinguished. I 
question whether in the long and honorable list of 
Harvard any class has produced, according to its 
numbers, more able men than this very class which 
spent its senior year in our town. All the students did 
not escape the fascinations of the place, for Dr. Ripley, 
for sixty-three years minister of Concord, Dr. Ilurd, 
for fifty -five years its physician, and Jonathan Fay, for 
thirty -three years its lawyer, were all members of the 
College in the year of its wandering. 

Whether any of the Lee family occupied the home- 
stead between the death of the doctor, in 1797, and the 
time when the property passed into other hands, in 
1814, 1 am not sure. But as Tcmpe Lee, widow of 
Silas Lee, did not part with her right of dower until 
1814, when William Gray gave her $1,100 for the same, 
it seems probable that she is the female member of the 
family of whom a faint memory remains in the minds 
of those born early in the century. The farm itself 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 163 

seems to have been owned jointly by his sons, Joseph 
and John. Then John became, by purchase, sole 
possessor. He conveyed it to his younger brother, 
Silas, from whom it passed finally out of the family. 
All these sons appear to have been men of more than 
usual ability. Joseph was ordained minister in Royal- 
ston in 1768, and preached his last sermon fifty years 
after his settlement. John was in Castine, Maine, as 
early as 1785, and was collector of the port from 1789 
till 1801. Afterwards he was largely engaged in the 
lumber business, apparently to no profit. For in 1810 
he conveyed the farm to Silas, as it would seem to 
protect his brother in the indorsement of a note of ten 
thousand dollars, which he himself could not pay. 
Silas was a lawyer in Wiscasset, Maine, about 1790, 
member of Congress in 1800 and 1801, United States 
Attorney for the State of Maine in 1802, and then Judge 
of Probate. As we have seen, he became owner of the 
farm in 1810. But one month later he mortgaged it 
for ^10,000, no doubt to enable him to pay the note 
for which he was bound, and at his death, in 1814, the 
mortgage not having been redeemed, the estate fell 
into the hands of the mortgagee. Before dismissing 
this portion of my subject, let me note, as an interest- 
ing case of persistence of the family type, that, while 
Dr. Joseph Lee was a Tory in the Revolution, his son 
John, in the war of 1812, was a Federalist to the verge 
of disloyalty, and his grandson John was in the War of 
the Rebellion in sympathy with the South and opposed 
to the government. 

So William Gray, merchant of Boston, became the 
owner of Lee's Farm. One of the notable men of his 
day was this same William Gray, better known by the 
sobriquet of Billy Gray. Born in Lynn in 1750, he 



164 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

was grandson of one of the three shoemakers of that 
town who kept journeymen. The boy himself was 
apprenticed to the same trade, and it is not unlikely 
that, if he had continued in it, with his vast energy he 
would have made Lynn before its time the great boot 
and shoe town. But health failing, he was put first 
into the employment of a Mr. Gardner, and then of 
Richard Derby, one of the great merchant kings of 
Salem, in the days of her great prosperity. A story is 
preserved of his boyhood, something of the George 
Washington and hatchet variety, in which the Salem 
lad appears at no disadvantage in comparison with the 
father of his country, but tells the tale of the breaking 
of a square of glass with such simple truth, that he 
receives from his employer as a reward a suit of 
clothes. Whether this story is veritable, or one of the 
myths which gather around great memories, I know 
not. But certain it is that his integrity, joined to a 
mind of wonderful capacity, enabled him to build up a 
business unparalleled in his time. He owned sixty 
square-rigged vessels, and his enthusiastic biographer 
exclaims that there was no country where his name 
was not known, and no sea not ploughed by his keels. 
He was a man of striking qualities. Through a long 
life he rose between three and four o'clock, writing all 
his letters, planning all his enterprises, before half 
the world was out of bed. As an employer he was just 
and generous. He never discharged a good servant, 
and kept many of his captains in his employ more than 
a quarter of a century. He first discerned the fine 
quality of Joshua Bates, the American partner of the 
Barings and the founder of the Boston Free Library, 
— taking him from his father's cart, which he was 
driving, into his counting-room, employing him in 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 165 

confidential business, and so launching him on his great 
career. One adage, now of pretty wide circulation, 
may be credited to him. When asked what " enough " 
was, he replied "a little more." Mr. Gray might 
never have left Salem — in which case Lee's Hill 
might never have known him — had it not been for 
the bitter party feeling of the time. In early life he 
had been a Federalist. But when the embargo, in Jef- 
erson's administration, went into effect, he separated 
from his party, opposing and defeating in town meet- 
ing a resolution of censure of the government. His mo- 
tive could not have been a selfish one, for on account 
of this embargo act he had himself forty vessels rotting 
at his wharves. But those were days of savage party 
division. There was no measuring of words. He was 
called everything that the vocabulary of abuse could 
furnish. Salem became distasteful to him. He went 
to Boston, carrying with him his business. There the 
Democratic party took him up and chose him Lieu- 
tenant Governor. During the war of 1812 he lavished 
his wealth in support of the government. Mr. Drake 
says that it was his gold that fitted out the " Constitu- 
tion " for that memorable cruise in which she took the 
"Guerriere," and forever dissipated the false ideas of 
British naval supremacy.^ Mr. Gray died in 1825, the 
richest maft in New England. It was in 1816, possibly 
in 1813 or 1814, that he became owner of Lee's Farm. 

1 An old merchant of Boston, but -oho spent his boyhood and 
youth in Concord, used to assert that the very timber of which the 
" Constitution " was built was cut from Lee's Hill, and that his own 
father teamed it to Chaa'lestown. Wlien we consider what a mag- 
nificent growth covered the hill, and that we know that Dr. Lee 
was in the habit of selling ship timber, the story looks probable 
enough, and it certainly adds a new element of interest to the spot. 



166 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

He never, indeed, lived here, but employed a foreman 
to carry on his place. There was a very heavy growth 
of old timber. The late Mr. James Wood told me that 
he worked one winter lumbering for Mr. Gray, that 
fourteen or fifteen teams were occupied drawing to the 
river the great pines and oaks, — some of them two 
and three and even four feet in diameter, — and that an 
enormous raft was made, floated down the river, thence 
to Boston, there to be used in the building of his 
wharf, and in the construction of his ships. I suspect 
that, on the whole, farming without the eye of the 
employer did not prove profitable. At any rate, in 
1821 he sold the farm for $3,000 less than it cost him; 
and so closed the connection with the town of one of 
the most remarkable merchants which Massachusetts 
ever produced. 

We have seen that up to 1825 the farm of which we 
have been discoursing had had in its varied history 
for owners an Indian queen, a fur-trader, an inn- 
keeper, two farmers, two doctors, two merchants, one 
minister, and one lawyer. It was now for a brief 
season to be the property of a judge. Samuel Phillips 
Prescott Fay was Concord-born, the son of Jonathan 
Fay. He graduated with high honor from Harvard 
College in 1798. A French war was then threatening, 
and a small army was gathered at Oxford in this State. 
Thither he went with the commission of captain. But 
the war never took place, and he returned to the study 
of the law which he had just commenced, was admitted 
to the bar, and early obtained a good professional rep- 
utation. In 1821 he was appointed Judge of Probate, 
and retained the place until ill health rendered him 
unequal to its duties, thirty-five years after. He was 
two years a member of the Governor's Council, and 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 167 

twenty-eight years an Overseer of Harvard College. 
As he lived until 1856, he must have been known to 
many of the elder portion of Concord people. The 
unbroken testimony is that he was a man of good legal 
ability, absolute integrity, great urbanity, and much 
quiet humor. His ownership of the property was 
nominal, as he purchased it in 1821, and held it till 
1825, not for himself, but for his sister's husband, 
Joseph Barrett. Still no account of the farm and its 
owners would be complete which omitted him. 

Joseph Barrett, familiarly handed down in Concord 
traditions as Squire Joe Barrett, was a striking figure 
in the town in the first half of this century. On his 
father's side he was grandson of Colonel James Barrett, 
who commanded at North Bridge. On his mother's 
side he was descended from Henry Woodis, one of the 
early owners of the farm, and Joseph Estabrook, the 
third minister of the town. Through his paternal 
grandmother he claimed kindred with Peter Bulkeley. 
Indeed, it may be said that in every fibre of his body 
and every drop of his blood he was a Concord product, 
for I have been unable to find a single ancestor on 
either side who was not either of Concord origin or 
else a settler of the town. In person he was wellnigh 
of gigantic proportions, standing an inch or two over 
six feet, and weighing more than two hundred and fifty 
pounds. Many feats of strength are told of him, such 
as lifting barrels of cider and shouldering and carrying 
up stairs a bag containing eight bushels of corn. His 
size and weight did not lessen his activity. In the hay 
field, cradling grain, or holding the plough, especially 
when he took part in full dress and ruffled shirt at 
ploughing matches, few men could keep pace with him. 
He was a person of great resolution and courage. For 



168 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

years ho was a deputy sheriff, and displayed both his 
sagacity and fearlessness in the arrest of hard charac- 
ters, which were by no means few, even in what many 
esteem to be the golden age of the republic. In 1825 
Mr. Barrett became the owner of the Lee Farm, 
though, as we have seen, it was purchased for him and 
occupied by him as early as 1821. How successful an 
agriculturist he was I know not, but he must have been 
a notable one. Everything he did was on a large scale. 
His nephew, George M. Barrett, told me that he used 
to keep a flock of eight hundred sheep. To these he 
gave endless attention, himself caring for them in 
health and sickness, so that they knew him and followed 
him. At one time he engaged in the manufacture of 
cider, often having on hand more than five hundred 
barrels. Cutting and teaming of wood and lumber 
grew in his hands to large proportions. A story 
which has been preserved shows how great a business 
in this line he must have done. A man asked the 
Squire if he would be one of several to loan him a yoke 
of oxen, as he had a great load to move. " How many 
do you want in all?" was the reply. "Ten yoke." 
"If that is all," said the Squire, "you need not go 
round to the neighbors to gather such a little team, I 
will furnish the whole." The fact is that Mr. Barrett 
had in his barn at that very time twelve yoke of oxen 
and six or eight horses. It is not so wonderful that, 
in these days of horned scarcity, his son likes to have 
a good pair of cattle. As we have intimated, the 
squire was a mighty man in the hay field, taking the 
lead, and permitting no man to pass him. His confi- 
dence in his vigor and activity led him into a sort of 
dilatorincss, by which lateness to church, and especially 
to the stnGre-coach, was a rule of his life, and which 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 169 

in a person of his .genial ways only added a touch of 
humor to people's conception of him. In 1844 he gave 
the charge of the farm up to his son Richard, working 
afterwards as suited his fancy. He was driving a load 
of stone when the news came to him that he was elected 
Treasurer and Receiver General of the State. He 
jocosely said he could not possibly accept it, for he 
was engaged to work for Dick at ten dollars a month. 
However, he must have made a compromise with his 
employer, as he took and filled the office until his 
death, in 1848. It would be presumptuous for me to 
attempt any characterization of one known to so many 
by personal acquaintance. But this, I think, may be 
said : No one would be likely to attempt to depict the 
social and business life of Concord between 1800 and 
1850, and omit from his picture the stalwart form and 
marked mental physiognomy of the twelfth owner of 
Lee's farm. Squire Joe Barrett. 

Of the later owners of Lee's farm it does not seem 
needful to speak at any great length. From 1844 to 
1852 it belonged to the son of the Squire, our towns- 
man. Captain Richard Barrett, and was carried on by 
him. He sold it in 1852, and has for many years filled 
the position of Treasurer of the Middlesex Mutual Fire 
Insurance Company. Samuel G. Wheeler, the pur- 
chaser, was a native of the State of New York, who in 
a long and active life had been by turns a manufac- 
turer, a commission merchant, and a dealer in real 
estate. While he occupied the place he thoroughly 
renovated the old mansion, built the great barn, laid 
the stone walls, planted on the Acton road rows of 
elms, and so in many ways added to the value and 
increased the comeliness of the estate. 

Four years passed, and the property had a new owner. 



170 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

It would have seemed as if every variety of life and 
occupation had already come into contact with the 
ancient farm ; but not so. The new owner, Captain 
David Elwell, was a retired sea captain, who in three- 
score and odd years had ploughed more water than land. 
He was a remarkably intelligent, active, and successful 
shipmaster, making long voyages, chiefly to the East 
Indies and Sumatra. It is remembered of him that he 
was the first American captain who ever sailed through 
the Straits of Magellan. In 1840 he retired from the 
sea, was for years Wharfinger of Union Wharf, and later 
Treasurer of the East Boston Dry Dock Company. At 
the advanced age of sixty-eight years he came to Con- 
cord. He filled the house with a great collection of 
curiosities gathered from many lands, and settled down 
in his new home. But in the winter of 1856-57 his 
house with all its contents w^as burned, and he moved 
back to East Boston. Nothing remained but the cellar 
and the great chimney. On this last there was, when 
I came to town, a half effaced inscription variously 
deciphered 1646 or 1656. It was no doubt the date of 
the erection of the building. A single Concord anec- 
dote of Captain Elwell has been preserved, and indi- 
cates that he was a man who had his own ideas of men 
and things, and did not hesitate to express them. 
After the fire he stopped a while at the Middlesex 
Hotel. Captain Isaac I. Hayes, of Arctic celebrity, 
came to Concord, probably to lecture. Rightfully or 
wrongfully, the impression then was that he had in 
an unjustifiable manner deserted his superior officer. 
Captain Kane. Some one offered to introduce Cap- 
tain Elwell to Mr. Hayes. "No," was the emphatic 
answer, " not to a man who deserted his commander. " 
The boy of ten or twelve who heard the reply never 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 171 

forgot the kind of wrathful indignation with which it 
was spoken. 

Two more changes, and the history of the farm is 
completed. It passed successively into the hands of 
two grandsons of old Dr. Isaac Hurd, who in the last 
year of his college life, spent as it was in Concord, 
might well have frequented its goodly acres, and 
possibly lived in its venerable homestead. Again 
fresh vocations furnished fresh owners. Joseph L. 
Hurd was a commission grain merchant, having his 
headquarters at Joliet, Illinois, a State which only as 
far back as the time when William Gray owned Lee's 
farm must have been a wellnigh untrodden prairie ; 
for in 1810 Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota together 
had only about twelve thousand inhabitants, or one 
person to every sixteen square miles. Charles Henry 
Hurd, the present owner, ^ came to the farm from an 
employment which would have filled our ancestors with 
astonishment, if not with affright. He had been a 
railroad man, a vocation which came into existence 
not half a century ago, and which in that brief time 
has wrought marvellous changes and accelerated mate- 
rial progress. 

Nearly a quarter of a millennium has slipped away 
since the white man took possession of these acres. 
The old mansion, the old barn, all the old things of 
man's device, are gone. A modern house and barn of 
grand proportions have now replaced them. Perhaps 
the farm looks forward to another two hundred and 

1 [In 1891 the farm was purchased from the heirs of Charles 
Henry Hurd by William Wheeler, a member of an old Concord 
family, who for many years has been engaged in building water 
works in different parts of the country, thus adding still another 
profession to the list IVIi'. Reynolds has given. — Editor.] 



172 STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 

fifty years of yet more varied history, to be rehearsed 
by some future chronicler to an audience yet to be. 
Who knows ? 

This is an ancient story, and I think it not amiss to 
add to the chronicle what our Puritan ministers used 
to call an improvement. Rightly viewed this farm has 
been in itself a little world. All trades, all profes- 
sions, all human interests, seem sooner or later to 
have come to it. The Indian, the fur-trader and 
planter of new towns, the Cromwellian soldier and 
inn-keeper, merchants, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, 
farmers, a judge, a minister, a sailor, a railroad mana- 
ger, — all these have possessed the land, and for the 
most part have departed and left little trace of them- 
selves behind. I count that nine different stocks or 
families have in two hundred and fifty years owned the 
farm, and that only two of them are represented in the 
town to-day, unless it be by remote side branches. But 
on the soil there are nothing but surface changes. The 
beautifully rounded little hill, the green meadow, the 
winding rivers, — these are just what they were two 
hundred years ago. 

Instinctively, as I close, I recall Emerson's words, 
which seem simply concentrated history : — 

" Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, 
Saying, ' 'T is mine, my children's and my name's ; 
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees I 
I low graceful climb those shadows on my hill ! 
I fancy these pure waters and the flags 
Know me, as does my dog ; we sympathize ; 
And, I affu-m, my actions smack of the soil.' 

" AVhere are these men ? Asleep beneath their grounds ; 
And strangers, fond as they, their fun-ows plough. 



STORY OF A CONCORD FARM AND ITS OWNERS. 173 

" The lawyer's deed 
Kan sure, 
In tail, 

To them and to their heirs 
Who shall succeed, 
AVithout fail, 
Forevermore. 

" Here is the land. 
Shaggy with wood, 
With the old valley, 
INIouud and flood. 
But the heritors ? 
Fled like the flood's foam, — 
The lawyer and the laws. 
And the kingdom. 
Clean swept herefi'om. 

" They called me theu'S, 
Who so controlled me ; 
Yet every one 

Wished to stay, and is gone. 
How am I theirs. 
If they cannot hold me. 
But I hold them?" 



CONCORD FIGHT. 

Printed in the Unitarian Review, April, 1875. 

WHAT was there in the character and position of 
the town of Concord a hundred years ago, or in 
its relations to the larger interests and transactions of 
the times, to make it the object of the first really 
powerful, hostile movement of the British Governor ? 
Any one who visits Concord now finds a neat, quiet 
town, of moderate size, girdled by low hills, and look- 
ing out upon broad green meadows, and upon the most 
winding and most tranquil of rivers. It is a pleasant 
town to see, and restful to the eye. To its own 
children it seems as towns are apt to seem, the pleas- 
antest spot on the earth. To a stranger, no doubt, it 
does not differ essentially from scores of villages Avhich 
nestle amid our hills, or sun themselves along our 
streams. 

It is very difficult, therefore, in 1875, to appreciate 
that in 1775 this quiet town was one of the great 
centres, not only of intellectual life, but also of politi- 
cal influence and power. Yet so it must have been. 
Of all our inland settlements, in population it was 
almost the largest, in resources almost the wealthiest. 
As a shire town there came to it necessarily that con- 
tinual excitement which stimulates in any community 
mental activity. Thither, five or six times a year, 
came the various courts of law, with their retinue of 
judges, jurors, lawyers, and suitors, numbering many 



CONCORD FIGHT. 175 

scores ; and came, not as now, borne quickly there by 
the railroad in the morning, and as quickly away at 
night, but to make the town a home for days and weeks. 
Here conventions for all manner of objects of county 
interest were accustomed to gather. Here, especially, 
in Puritan fashion, in the meeting-house, the choice 
spirits of the county, or, as Paul Revere termed them, 
the High Sons of Liberty, met to discuss grievances, to 
deepen the love of freedom, and the purpose to resist 
oppression, and, above all, to ripen feelings of patriotism 
or indignation into wise action. It was not an unim- 
portant circumstance either that Concord was the first 
settlement in the State off tide-water. For a time our 
fathers clung to the rocky and barren shores of that 
ocean which divided them from their old home. At 
Plymouth, at Salem, at Boston, at Dorchester and 
Roxbury, and at many other places on the seaboard, 
the germs of flourishing towns and cities were planted. 
But inland there was nothing but the wilderness and 
the savage. Not until fifteen years after that immortal 
voyage of the "Mayflower," in 1635, did a little band 
of Puritans cross the first barrier of hills which shuts 
from sight the ocean, and settle by the side of what the 
Indian called, from its wide meadows, the "grass- 
ground river." They named the new home Concord, — 
title strangely unprophetic of that bitter fight which 
ushered in the bitterer struggles of the Revolution! 
As a necessary result of this early origin, the town 
became one of the few hives from whose redundance 
New England was peopled. Everywhere its children 
went. In all the towns along the seaboard of Maine, 
in the new settlements which were springing up in 
Southern New Hampshire and Vermont, in the younger 
villages of Middlesex and Worcester Counties, in far 



176 CONCORD FIGHT. 

off Connecticut, as it was then, there were men and 
women whose ancestral home was within the territorial 
limits of old Concord. So its name was a household 
word on the lips of many who never had seen, and 
perhaps never should see it with the bodily eye. 

Thus, from various reasons, it happened that, in 
1775, among all the inland towns in Eastern Massachu- 
setts Concord was the most prominent, — the natural, 
as it was the political, centre of the great and patriotic 
county of Middlesex. It was a small town, as we 
estimate towns, never in its best estate before the 
Revolution having exceeded two thousand people. But 
we must not forget that Massachusetts, according to 
modern standards, was itself a small State. 

It was no doubt on account of this prominence in 
character and position that Concord was, from the 
beginning, chosen to be the place for the first meeting 
of the First Provincial Congress of Massachusetts. In 
making this statement, we do not overlook the just 
claims of Salem. It was at Salem that the vote was 
passed which created that Congress. It was at Salem, 
too, that the General Court resolved to become a part 
of that Congress. But we repeat, in its wholeness, with 
all the members which constituted it, the Provincial 
Congress first met and transacted business at Concord. 
As the creation of a Provincial Congress drew after it 
by almost necessary sequence "Lexington Alarm," 
Concord Fight, Bunker Hill, and to no little degree 
the national independence, it is well to count the steps 
by which it came into existence. In the summer of 
1774 thoughtful people saw that a break between the 
legislative and executive branches was at hand, — to 
be followed, inevitably, by a stern struggle for suprem- 
acy between the two. When that break took place, 



CONCORD FIGHT. 177 

where should the representatives of the people find a 
legislative home ? Boston was dominated by a great 
British army. Salem and all the sea-coast towns 
would, in event of trouble, be at the mercy of British 
fleets. A town itself thoroughly patriotic, and sur- 
rounded by a population of the same temper, near 
enough to Boston to be in communication with its Sons 
of Liberty, far enough from it to be safe from the inter- 
ference or threats of the royal Governor, seemed to be 
the first requisite. All eyes turned to Concord. A 
convention of the best men in Middlesex, held in its 
meeting-house, "Voted, August 31, 1774, that each 
town in the county be recommended to elect one or 
more delegates to attend a Provincial meeting, to be 
holden at Concord the second Tuesday in October." 
Suffolk County, in an equally important convention, 
held at Mr. Vose's house, Milton, September 9, recom- 
mended to its towns the same course. Cumberland 
County, in what was then the distant Province of 
Maine, added its voice to the same effect, September 
22. And Worcester County spake with no uncertain 
sound. It advised "its towns to instruct the Repre- 
sentatives who may be chosen to meet at Salem, in 
October next, absolutely to refuse to be sworn by any 
officer or officers but such as are or may be appointed 
according to the constitution. And should anything 
prevent their acting with the Governor and Council, as 
is set forth in the Charter, that they immediately repair 
to the town of Concord, and there join in a Provincial 
Congress with such other members as are or may he 
chosen for that purpose." The General Court met at 
Salem, October 5, 1774, waited two days for the Gover- 
nor to take the proper steps to qualify its members, — 
waited, as no doubt it expected to wait, in vain, — and 

12 



178 CONCORD FIGHT. 

then proceeded on the 7th to elect John Hancock its 
chairman, and Benjamin Lincoln its clerk, and by 
the following votes to merge its own existence into 
that of the new and larger body: "Voted, that the 
members aforesaid do now resolve themselves into a 
Provincial Congress, to he joined hy suck other persons 
as may have been or shall he chosen for that purpose, to 
take into consideration the dangerous and alarming 
situation of public affairs in the Province, and to con- 
sult and determine on such measures as they shall 
judge will tend to promote the true interests of his 
Majesty in the peace, welfare, and prosperity of the 
Province. Voted, that the Congress be adjourned to 
the meeting-house in Concord." Arrived at Concord 
the second Tuesday in October, the first business was 
to reconsider the votes by which John Hancock was 
elected chairman, and Benjamin Lincoln clerk, and 
then to elect the same persons to similar positions 
under the titles of President and Secretary. Such 
action was had, no doubt, because the presence of addi- 
tional members made the form of reorganization both 
respectful and proper. It is absolutely certain that in 
some cases such additional members were chosen. It 
is wellnigh certain that more than one half of those 
who were at Concord were not elected to Salem. The 
body thus reorganized and its successor for six months 
met alternately at Concord and Cambridge. The Sec- 
ond Provincial Congress was in Concord in March and 
April, 1775, and adjourned only four days before the 
encounter at North Bridge. By its sessions there it 
must have helped largely to make the town an object of 
interest to the friends, and an object of enmity to the 
foes, of freedom. In that old meeting-house, which, 
repaired and remodelled, alas ! stands now on the same 



CONCORD FIGHT. I79 

church green, what words to fire men's souls were 
spoken, what policy to shape the destiny of the State 
was enacted ! There Joseph Warren, John Hancock, 
Samuel and John Adams, Elbridge Gerry, names 
memorable in the State and national history for the 
next generation, and with them Prescott, Heath, Ward, 
Lincoln, the first military leaders of the Revolution, 
played their part. Scarcely Independence Hall itself 
has more venerable associations. 

As a natural consequence the committees of safety 
and supplies — the most important bodies which ever 
existed in the Commonwealth, to whom the whole work 
of arousing the people and preparing for their defence 
was intrusted, who were to call into existence soldiery, 
to find officers, to procure arms, to gather supplies, to 
appoint depots, to be, as it were, eyes and hands to all 
the rest — were constantly at Concord. They were 
there, John Hancock at their head, on the 17th of 
April, not more than thirty-six hours before brave men 
were massacred almost before his eyes on Lexington 
Green. 

Very early in the history of these committees, it is 
stated that they ordered to be deposited in Worcester 
two hundred barrels of pork, four hundred of flour, 
and one hundred and fifteen bushels of peas ; and in 
Concord, one hundred and thirty -five barrels of pork, 
three hundred of flour, one hundred and fifty bushels of 
peas, and fifty-five tierces of rice; and "Voted, that 
all the cannon, mortars, cannon-balls, and shells be 
deposited in the towns of Worcester and Concord in 
the same proportions as the provisions are to be 
deposited." These votes, so far as Worcester was 
concerned, were never carried into effect. But Concord 
became one great storehouse. Every farmer's barn, 



180 CONCORD FIGHT. 

the town-house, the court-house, the tavern shed, the 
miller's loft, all hecame extempore depots for pro- 
visions and munitions of war. Very likely in other 
places there were limited supplies. But gradually, in 
comparison with the means of the Province, a vast store 
was accumulated at Concord. Eleven hundred tents, 
ten tons of cartridges, eighteen tons of rice, eight tons 
of fish, many hundred barrels of flour, fifteen thousand 
canteens, a thousand iron pots, besides cannon and 
mortars, round-shot and grape-shot, canister and shells, 
spades, pickaxes, billhooks, shovels, axes, hatchets, 
crows, and wheelbarrows, wooden plates and spoons, 
cartouch-boxes and holsters, belts and saddles, and 
many other articles, made up this astonishing deposit. 
No doubt Concord was made such a depot because it 
was a large" town, and had several military companies; 
because, too, it was near the probable scene of action, 
yet far enough away to be reasonably safe from any 
sudden attack. One cannot but think that the thor- 
oughly trustworthy character of Colonel James Barrett, 
who was the sole custodian of these treasures, must 
have entered largely into the calculation. The com- 
mittee were aware how precious was the charge com- 
mitted to the brave old town. They enjoin Colonel 
Barrett to keep watch day and night. He must always 
have teams ready to transport away the goods at the 
first alarm. He "must not so mucK as mention the 
name powder, lest our enemies should take advantage 
of it." But such a secret could not be kept. Tories 
stole to Boston to tell it. British officers came thither 
in disguise, noting all the difficulties of the way, and 
seeking to find the places of deposit. Tradition says 
that Major Pitcairn visited the town. Finally, the 
committee was alarmed, and the day before the battle. 



CONCORD FIGHT. 181 

too late fully to accomplish their purpose, ordered that 
the munitions and provisions should be distributed 
among nine different towns. Meanwhile each patriot in 
Boston was a volunteer sentinel, watching every move- 
ment of General Gage, with eye quick to detect each 
change of military position, with ear open to catch the 
faintest whisper of danger. So that when the royal 
Governor resolved upon action, almost before he gave 
his order to Colonel Smith to march to Concord and 
destroy there the munitions of war, his counsels were 
known; and while the soldiery were embarking to 
cross Charles River, Paul Revere was taking that 
adventurous ride over which poet and historian alike 
delight to linger. 

Why did the fight happen at Concord ? It could 
happen nowhere else. With Boston for a centre, 
within a radius of twenty-five miles there was no other 
spot where Gage could strike to such profit. He might, 
indeed, in quiet villages find men to whom it was 
sweet to die for country ; for brave hearts were plenty 
then. He might burn the humble homes of those who 
loved freedom more than safety. But such acts ex- 
asperate rather than weaken. But, at Concord, had 
the four hundred militia gathered on Ponkawtasset 
Hill held aloof, and left the Provincial stores to the 
mercy of the British troops twenty-four hours. Gage 
had struck a deadlier blow than if he had slain five 
hundred on the battle-field. The direction of his 
march was neither of accident nor of choice, but of 
necessity. When Revere knew that Gage was on the 
war-path, he did not have to ask whither to ride. 

But what happened at Concord ? A body of Ameri- 
can soldiers, organized under legal authority, at the 
command of their officers advanced in military array, 



182 CONCORD FIGHT. 

received the fire of the enemy, and, when ordered, 
attacked and forced a similar body of British troops to 
retreat. This is what distinguishes the fight at Old 
North Bridge from all previous affairs. Not to speak 
of the troubles in North Carolina, there had already 
been in New England hostile incidents and meetings 
more than one, though they are fast being forgotten. 
The boy Snider, who was shot in Boston streets the 
22d of February, 1770, was unquestionably the first 
Revolutionary martyr. But he was murdered, not by 
a British soldier, but by a British sympathizer, who, 
resenting the posting of a brother Tory, was driven 
home by a band of boys with many hoots and some 
stones, and in his fury shot a little fellow of eleven 
years who happened to be present. Eleven days after, 
the Boston Massacre followed. Here a squad of British 
soldiers fired a volley into a crowd of people, killing 
three and wounding eight persons, most of whom had 
committed no offence whatever. But the affair was so 
connected with previous quarrels, and with immediate 
threats and insults, that an American jury, rather than 
run the risk of injustice, substantially acquitted the 
soldiery. The next encounter in order is the burning 
of the "Gaspee," — one of the most gallant achieve- 
ments of the whole period. The " Gaspee " was a 
British schooner of eight guns, which haunted the 
waters of Narragansctt Bay, and, with little cause, and 
no evidence of rightful authority, stopped and harassed 
the vessels plying thereupon. This sea-wasp, pursuing 
a peaceful packet, got aground a few miles below 
Providence. John Brown, of that place, with others, 
fitted out eight whale-boats, which dropped down the 
river on the evening of June 9, 1772, and reached the 
stranded vessel a little after midnight. After a brief 



CONCORD FIGHT. 183 

struggle, the schooner was captured, her crew put 
ashore, and she burned. In the affray her commander. 
Lieutenant Duddingston, was wounded, and could justly 
claim that from his veins had come the first English 
blood shed in the contest. Captain Abraham Whipple 
led the Americans, and thus was engaged in the 
earliest private naval exploit, as three years later he 
commanded in the first public naval battle. But gal- 
lant as the achievement certainly was, it was a private 
expedition, and always disallowed by the Rhode Island 
authorities. Boston gave its celebrated tea party De- 
cember 16, 1773. The festivities, though they closed 
with a masquerade and a libation to Neptune, need not 
be described. They certainly were not presided over 
by the authorities. February 26, 1775, Colonel Leslie 
stole out of Castle William with two hundred men, 
and made a rapid march through Marblehead, hoping to 
capture in Salem and Danvers certain military stores. 
He found the drawbridge between the two towns up. 
A scuffle ensued for the possession of two flat-boats. 
And North Bridge, Salem, might have taken its place 
in history instead of North Bridge, Concord. For 
Colonel Pickering was the best educated military man 
in the Province, and the Essex militia afterwards, at the 
close of that hot April day, showed of what stuff they 
were made. But neither party was anxious to precipi- 
tate hostilities. And Leslie agreed, that if, for honor's 
sake, he was permitted to march thirty rods beyond the 
bridge, he would abandon the objects of his expedition. 
About this time an affair of great seriousness took place 
at Westminster, the shiretown of Windham County, 
which then included the whole southern half of 
Vermont this side the mountains. Under the direc- 
tion of some sort of a rude organization, the people of 



184 CONCORD FIGHT. 

Westminster and the vicinity took possession of the 
court-house, March 13, and refused entrance to the 
royal judge, sheriff, and their attendants. A parley 
ensued. It was agreed that the judge, without an 
armed force, should come into the court-house and 
discuss matters with the malcontents. This agreement 
was broken by the sheriff. For at midnight he appeared 
with a considerable party and demanded admittance. 
Being refused, he gave orders to fire into the building. 
One man was killed and one wounded. This was the 
first American blood shed by direct command of a 
royal official, when at the time no violence was offered 
or threatened. But, as there was then in Vermont no 
State authority of any kind, patriotic or otherwise, 
this affair too must take its place among volunteer 
movements. 

Five hours before the fight at Concord, the first 
hostile meeting between organized American and 
organized British soldiers, each party acting under 
what it held to be legitimate authority, took place. 
Before sunrise on that morning, at the first intimation 
of danger forty to seventy minute-men (the exact 
number is uncertain) assembled by order of their 
captain, John Parker, on the little green in front of 
Lexington church. The promptness with which these 
men responded to the call, the courage which they dis- 
played in a hot encounter later in the day, proves them 
to be entitled to the place of brave men among the 
bravest. As this party was drawn up across the upper 
end of the common, the sudden appearance of Major 
Pitcairn, his order to the Americans to disperse, and 
his quick command to his own soldiers to fire, made 
the quiet green the scene of a bloody massacre, and at 
the command of their captain the Lexington men dis- 



CONCOED FIGHT. 185 

persed, leaving one quarter, if not one third of their 
number, dead or wounded. There has been a long and 
often needlessly warm discussion as to whether any 
guns were fired by the minute-men in return for the 
fatal volley which they received. Authorities certainly 
differ. And it is not possible quite to reconcile the 
adverse affidavits. So the question can never be abso- 
lutely settled. But a candid weighing of all the evi- 
dence makes it altogether probable that, as the company 
dispersed, three or four, and possibly eight or ten, guns 
were fired. But, as a military encounter, the contest 
was hopeless from the beginning. Such shots as were 
fired were discharged, not only without the orders of 
Captain Parker, but in direct opposition to them, and 
were prompted by the impulse and courage of the 
individuals themselves. Beyond inflicting slight flesh 
wounds upon a soldier or two, they did no damage to 
the enemy, and scarcely delayed his onward movement. 
"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." 
And it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of 
the cruel affair at Lexington, in exciting sympathy, in 
arousing indignation, in giving courage to the timid, 
and in fusing all different feelings and opinions into 
one united sentiment of patriotism. It is with just 
reason, therefore, that the sons of Lexington, and the 
whole State, hold in solemn remembrance the brave 
men who fell that day. 

The peculiarities of the fight at Old North Bridge, 
which divided it from all skirmishes or battles which 
had occurred previously, and which entitle it to dis- 
tinct remembrance as an event of unsurpassed impor- 
tance, are, that there every movement of the militia was 
made in accordance with the orders of those legiti- 
mately in command; that there, for the first time, 



186 CONCORD FIGHT. 

British soldiers fell before an American fire; and, 
especially, that there the invader was turned back, once 
for all, never to make another hostile advance on 
Massachusetts soil, unless the few acres enlargement 
of his prison house won by the awful slaughter at 
Bunker Hill be called an advance. Other places have, 
and justly, their sacred memories. But within the 
bounds of the original thirteen States there is no spot 
more interesting than the two secluded green slopes, 
with the quiet river flowing between, where the soldiers 
of the King and the soldiers of the people met in 
military array and exchanged fatal volleys. 

"1775, 19 April. — This morning," writes the patri- 
otic Concord minister in his diary, "between one 
and two o'clock, we were alarmed by the ringing of 
the bell, and upon examining found that the troops, to 
the number of eight hundred, had stolen their march 
from Boston in boats and barges, from the bottom of 
the Common over to a point in Cambridge near to 
Inman's farm. This intelligence was brought us first 
by Dr. Samuel Prescott, who narrowly escaped the 
guard that were sent before on horses, purposely to 
prevent all posts and messengers from giving us timely 
information. He, by the help of a very fleet horse, 
crossing several walls and fences, arrived at Concord 
at the time aforementioned ; when several posts were 
immediately despatched that returning confirmed the 
account of the regulars' arrival at Lexington, and that 
they were on the way to Concord. " Such is the account 
of the first tidings of the invasion in the very words of 
one who was an eyewitness of the events which suc- 
ceeded. It was probably about three o'clock before the 
town thoroughly comprehended its danger. The hurry, 
the confusion, the excitement, the alarm, which must 



CONCORD FIGHT. 187 

have filled this little village during the four hours in 
which it awaited the coming of eight hundred merce- 
nary soldiers, can hardly be imagined, far less described. 
Every available man and team must be impressed to 
carry away or to hide the precious stores. The minute- 
men and members of the old military companies were 
preparing their arms and equipments for immediate 
service. Many of the women and children took to the 
woods for safety. Tradition preserves some simple 
anecdotes, which have not yet been recorded, and 
which reveal the varying humors of the time. Thus, 
one good lady, hearing that the regulars were coming, 
goes straight to the adjoining meeting-house, and takes 
the communion plate and buries it in her soap-barrel 
in her cellar, in the arch under a great chimney which 
is still standing. Another, getting ready to take her 
children into the woods, in her confusion went to her 
drawer and put on a checked apron, which in those 
days was the proper adornment on state occasions. 
This she unconsciously did over and over again, until, 
when she recovered her wits in her hiding place, she 
found she had on seven checked aprons. No doubt 
every home had its tale, both pathetic and ludicrous, 
to tell. 

A little after sunrise two hundred armed men had 
come together. Three quarters were from Concord, a 
few from Acton, and the rest minute-men and militia 
from Lincoln. Their advance was stationed a mile 
toward Lexington, at the end of that steep ridge which 
skirts the village on the north. The main body occu- 
pied, "as the most advantageous situation," the high 
point of that same ridge, directly opposite the meeting- 
house. A little before seven, the advance came hurry- 
ing back, saying that the enemy were at hand, and 



188 CONCOED FIGHT. 

" their numbers were more than treble ours. " A second 
position was now taken, " back of the town, on an emi- 
nence." This was probably somewhere on that high 
land which borders Monument Street, though some 
think at the extreme northern end of the ridge first 
occupied, which many years ago was levelled to give 
room for the court-house. " Scarcely had we formed, " 
says the same diary, " before we saw the British troops, 
at a distance of a quarter of a mile, glittering in arms, 
advancing towards us with the greatest celerity. " So 
high was the courage of our people, and so unwilling 
were they to retreat, that not a few insisted upon meet- 
ing the enemy then and there, though some estimated 
his numbers at twelve hundred, and none at less than 
eight hundred. Finally, Colonel James Barrett, who 
had been by the Provincial Congress put over all the 
forces in the neighborhood, and who about this time 
rode up, having been engaged since daybreak in secur- 
ing the stores, ordered them to fall back over the 
bridge to Ponkawtasset Hill, a high eminence which 
overlooks the village, and there wait for reinforce- 
ments. This order was obeyed, as were all rightful 
orders given that day. By half-past nine the Acton 
minute-men, two small companies from Bedford, and 
individuals from Westford, Carlisle, Chelmsford, and 
very likely from other places, had joined them. They 
numbered, perhaps four hundred and fifty, perhaps 
three hundred and fifty, — more likely the last than 
the first. Meanwhile a small body of British troops 
occupied South Bridge. A hundred, under Captain 
Laurie, guarded North Bridge. A hundred marched 
by the river road to seek for stores at Colonel Barrett's, 
possibly to seek for the Colonel himself. The main 
body of five or six hundred remained in the centre, 
looking, to very little purpose, for munitions of war. 



CONCORD FIGHT. 189 

At this time smoke and flame, rising from the burn- 
ing of cannon wheels, became visible to these anxious 
watchers upon the hill. What was it ? Were the 
cruel enemy setting fire to their homes ? They could 
not longer remain inactive. A hurried debate was 
had. And then Colonel Barrett gave orders to Major 
John Buttrick to lead the little force down the hill to 
the bridge, charging him not to fire unless he was fired 
upon. There has been a hot discussion as to the rela- 
tive position of men and companies in this advance. 
We shall not enter into it, for it belittles and insults a 
great event. Whether the Acton men led, or marched 
side by side with David Brown's Concord minute-men; 
or, if they led, whether it was because they had a more 
forward courage, or, as Amos Baker of Lincoln testi- 
fied, because they alone had bayonets with which to 
meet the enemy, if he should trust to steel rather 
than lead, — are questions which can never be settled. 
Enough that in fact the Acton men did occupy the 
post of greatest danger, and like brave men, as they 
were, held it firmly. But what swallows up every 
other consideration is the thought of the incredible 
courage which was in all these men. Was there not 
real courage in that Colonel, man of mark and position, 
foremost person of his town and neighborhood, with 
little to gain and much to lose, who, with his hair 
already whitening with age, sat there on his horse, and 
issued a command which was nothing less than flat 
rebellion, which could never be forgiven him except 
at the end of a successful civil war ? Estimate for me, 
if you can, the courage of the last man in the last file 
of that little battalion; his physical courage who dared, 
with a few hundred militia, to march down to attack 
what he believed to be three times their number of the 



190 CONCORD FIGHT. 

best soldiers in the world ; his moral courage who, a 
plain farmer perhaps, averse to quarrels, law-abiding, 
in obedience to his political convictions was ready to 
^ confront with hostile weapons the servants of him who 
till that hour he had held to be his legitimate sover- 
eign ! Merely to have contemplated seriously such a 
step stamps all these men as heroes. 

What followed, everybody knows. The Americans 
marched down to within a few rods of the bridge, with 
wonderful self-restraint received a few scattering shots, 
which wounded Luther Blanchard of Acton and Jonas 
Brown of Concord, and afterwards a volley by which 
Captain Davis and Abner Hosmer of Acton were 
killed. Then rang out the startling order, "Fire, 
fellow soldiers, for God's sake, fire ! " And from all 
those silent pieces poured forth a volley. It was a 
deadly one. Out of a hundred men, according to 
Gage's official statement, three were killed, and nine 
wounded, and, by the American account, three killed 
and eight wounded. Of the killed, one died imme- 
diately by a shot in the head. One expired before his 
comrades reached the village, and was buried in the 
old graveyard. One, mortally wounded, was cloven 
through the skull with a hatchet by a lad, at whom, 
says Chaplain Thaxter, he had made a thrust with his 
bayonet. From the window of the house now occupied 
by the Hon. John S. Keyes, a little girl of four years 
was looking out. She never forgot how pleased she 
was to see the two hundred British soldiers march by 
in perfect order, with their bright weapons and scarlet 
coats and white pantaloons, or how terrified to see the 
same men come back, hurried, in disorder, muddy, a 
great many as it seemed to her, with limbs tied up and 
bloody. In the record of this hot skirmish, five names 



CONCORD FIGHT. 191 

stand out to receive peculiar honor. First, Captain 
Isaac Davis, of Acton, a modest manly soldier of only 
thirty years, who could say that he had trained up a 
company, not one of whom feared to follow him, who 
assumed his position with a full sense of its gravity, 
and died first of all in the front rank; Major John 
Buttrick, of Concord, who himself, within sight and 
sound of his own home, led the advance, and at the 
right moment gave the word of command; Colonel 
John Robinson, of Westford, who, reaching the field 
before his own townsmen, as a volunteer walked side 
by side with Davis and Buttrick ; Lieutenant Joseph 
Hosmer, of Concord, who acted as adjutant on that 
day, and by his earnest words, "Will you let them 
burn the town down ? " determined that heroic march 
down the hill to the river; Captain William Smith, of 
Lincoln, who volunteered with his single company to 
attempt to dislodge the enemy from the bridge; — 
brave men were these, whose names must ever be con- 
nected with a memorable event, but possibly not braver 
than scores who that day played their part and are 
forgotten. 

Here, perhaps, dramatic unity would close the story. 
For here ends the fight at Old North Bridge. The 
Americans pursued the retreating foe a few rods, until 
he was strongly reinforced, then, turning to the left, 
climbed the hill back of Mr. Keyes's house, from which 
they had in all probability descended in the morning. 
As it was evident that there was no intention to burn 
the town, the insane attempt to dislodge twice their 
number from what Emerson terms "the most advan- 
tageous situation " was not made. But the field of 
battle was really won. Irresolution and timidity had 
entered the British counsels ; and, after various marches 



192 CONCORD FIGHT. 

and countermarches, at twelve o'clock they began their 
terrible retreat. Then a strong detachment of Ameri- 
cans hurried across the great fields, and at Merriam's 
Corner, a mile and a quarter below the village, joined 
the Billerica and Reading men in a fresh attack. Half 
a mile on, the Sudbury company came up, and there 
was a new struggle. On the edge of Lincoln, where 
then thick woods shut in the road, was the severest 
encounter of the day. And so the fight merged into 
that persistent attack and pursuit from all quarters of 
the British forces, through Lincoln, through Lexing- 
ton, through West Cambridge, through Charlestown 
almost to the water's edge, and to the protection of the 
great ships of war. In Lincoln it was that Captain 
Jonathan Wilson, of Bedford, who had been on the 
field among the earliest, through a too adventurous 
courage, died. During this pursuit, too, three out of 
the four Concord captains were wounded. So some- 
where in that long route, if not at North Bridge, these 
men sought and found their post of danger. 

What were the results of the Concord Fight ? If we 
look only at its immediate results, then we say, of 
itself it baffled the plans of the royal Governor. Had 
nothing occurred after the encounter at North Bridge, 
had Colonel Smith gone back peacefully to Boston, as 
over a parade ground, none the less he would have gone 
back defeated. He did not steal out from Boston, 
with the best soldiers of her garrison, and swiftly 
traverse the fields of Middlesex, that he might see the 
beauty of the country, — not even to slay, in unequal 
conflict, ten rebels. He came to ravage that Provincial 
storehouse and magazine which Concord was. And 
he failed. Quite likely great efforts had been made in 
the preceding weeks, and especially on the day before, 



CONCORD FIGHT. 193 

to deplete that storehouse. Certainly that morning, 
while awaiting his arrival, wonderful energy was dis- 
played by the whole people in removing stores to places 
of safety. Every conceivable expedient was tried. 
They were removed to neighboring towns. They were 
concealed in thickets. They were hidden under straw 
and feathers, and even under manure heaps. Colonel 
Barrett took up a bed of sage in his garden, and there 
buried cannon and their wheels, and then planted his 
sage over them in the old place. One man ploughed 
long, deep furrows, and filled them with kegs of 
powder, and then turned the next furrows over them. 
Still there was an ample supply left, if only time had 
been given to find it. In one shed, within a hundred 
feet of where the light infantry marched, more than 
eight tons of provisions were stored. But the stout 
skirmish at the bridge, and the increasing gathering 
on Jones's Hill, broke the courage of the British com- 
mander, and his achievements bore about the same 
relation to his original purpose that the scratch of a 
pin does to the deep wound which lets out the life- 
blood from the heart. 

In the production of those greater results; of that 
mighty wave of indignation, which, like a prairie fire, 
swept from before it every obstacle ; of that wonder- 
ful uprising, not only of all Massachusetts, but of all 
New England, and, we might add, of all America, 
which made Boston, in one week, not a British con- 
quest, but a British prison; of that unanimity of patri- 
otism which was all that was required to make the 
Colonies unconquerable, — in the creation of these cer- 
tainly each of the three great events of the day, the 
massacre at Lexington, the fight at Concord, the stub- 
born pursuit to Charlestown hills, did its part and had 



194 CONCORD FIGHT. 

its influence, — which most, who can tell ? Enough 
that the 19th of April really created the nation. And 
each town which helped on that day rightfully claims 
its share of the honor. 

One word, in closing. Emphatically — far more 
emphatically than is usually remembered — was the 
encounter at North Bridge a Concord Fight. Not one 
of the organized military bodies which shared with the 
old town her danger and her glory but were bound to 
her by closest ties. They were literally bone of her 
bone and flesh of her flesh. Just twenty-one years 
before that bright spring morning, the 19th of April, 
1751, the whole western half of Lincoln for the last 
time was included within her bounds. Forty years 
before, Acton, and, forty -six years before, the larger 
part of Bedford, by her consent, and out of her broad 
fields, had been erected into separate municipalities. 
Carlisle, which had once gone out, was now, by its 
own request, back in the old relations. So it was 
Concord, — not the Concord of the narrow limits of 
to-day, but the Concord which the Puritan owned and 
planted, — that larger Concord which once found its 
religious, yea, and its political home, in the very 
meeting-house which, unchanged, saw the invader 
advance and retreat, — that original Concord it was 
which "fired the shot heard round the world." 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

THE Peace of 1783 was a welcome event. By se- 
curing independence to the Colonies, it crowned 
with success the struggles and sacrifices of eight bitter 
years ; and it brought to an end that drain of men and 
waste of resources which had become almost too great 
to be borne. The tradition is that the news of the 
ratification of the treaty was received everywhere with 
tumultuous joy. As the tidings spread from town to 
town all faces brightened. Neighbors grasped each 
other cordially by the hand. The bells rung out from 
the steeples. The pulpits resounded with thanksgiving. 
In the cities and larger towns there were bonfires and 
illuminations, and special gatherings and addresses. 
For the moment it seemed as if all troubles had passed 
away. 

But the joy was of brief duration. The great expec- 
tation was followed by as great disappointment. To 
momentary harmony succeeded jealousy and heart- 
burnings and an honest sense of wrongs, which brought 
divisions into every community ; so that within three 
years of the declaration of peace actual rebellion had 
appeared, and every Massachusetts man, and especially 
every citizen of a shiretown, like Concord, had to ask 
the question whether liberty regulated by law was a 
possibility. 



196 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

The causes of that condition of things, which culmi- 
nated in what is called the Shajs Rebellion, are not 
hard to find. Those wild ideas of freedom and human 
rights, which are always generated in some minds 
amid the heat of a successful revolution, had, no doubt, 
their influence. Ardent and unbalanced natures came 
to expect an impossible deliverance from personal 
burdens, and an absolute personal liberty which was 
inconsistent with the continuance of the social state. 
Said Luke Day,i the ablest of the leaders in the Shays 
Rebellion, to the men whom he was leading against 
Springfield arsenal : " My boys, you are going to fight 
for liberty. If you wish to know what liberty is, I will 
tell you. It is for every man to do what he pleases, 
and to make other folks do as you please to have 
them, and to keep folks from serving the devil." Job 
Shattuck of Groton,^ the leading spirit in the Middle- 
sex department of the rebellion, said, in an harangue in 
his native town, " it was time to abolish all debts and 
begin anew." That there were a very large number 
who sympathized with these revolutionary expressions 
is certain. General Knox,^ in a letter to Livingston, 
estimated that nearly two sevenths of the people of the 
State were in favor of annihilation of all debts, both 
public and private. 

But the chief source of disaffection was real poverty. 
The interruption of business, occasioned by the war, 
the depreciation of the currency, the difficulty of sell- 
ing at a fair price any kind of property, made it 
impossible for honest and solvent people to pay their 
debts. But in those times debt was treated, not as a 

1 Holland's History of Western Massachusetts, vol. i. p. 296. 

2 Boston Centinel, September 16, 1786. 

8 Debates of Convention of 1788, p. 400. 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 197 

misfortune, but as a crime. The records of the old 
Concord jail reveal this astounding fact, that in the 
year 1786 three times as many were imprisoned for 
debt as for all other causes combined. No doubt the 
records of other jails and of other years would tell as 
painful a story. In many cases the prisoners were 
Revolutionary soldiers, whose fidelity to their country 
was the direct cause of their poverty. One peculiarly 
exasperating circumstance was frequently added. The 
prosecutors were disloyal men, who, having fled the 
country at the beginning of the war, now returned 
under the protection of the treaty to crush in the courts 
of law those whom they could not defeat on the battle- 
field. In one instance it is on record that a Concord 
man. Dr. Ezekiel Brown, who had served three years 
in the army, was arrested and put in jail for more than 
two years by a creditor, Frederick William Geyer, who 
was a Tory who had fled to England and there remained 
until the declaration of peace, and whose disloyalty 
was so notorious that his name appeared in a published 
list of absentees, headed by the name of Governor 
Barnard, who were declared by the State to be 
outlawed.^ 

How strongly the town of Concord felt the injustice 
of this return of Tory refugees and creditors may be 
understood by a perusal of the following extracts from 
its instructions to its Representative, Joseph Hosmer, 
voted in town meeting, May 26, 1783 : — 

" Although with pleasure we anticipate the Blessings of 
Peace, yet when we look into the treaty formed and agreed 
upon by the Commissioners from the several warring nations 
for Peace, in their Fifth Article we find that the Congress of 
these United States are to recommend to the several States in 
1 Continental Journal, June 18, 1781. 



198 CONCORD DURDsG THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

the Union to make Provision for the return of those persons 
whom we call Tories, or Refugees, who in the beginning of 
the war chose their side and many of them with our enemies 
against us, and whom by our laws, which we call just, are 
excluded ever returning again, or enjoying any estate they 
left behind them, which is very alarming to us, and we 
would Deprecate their return as one of tlie greatest evils 
which could fall upon us, — We therefore must instruct you, 
Sir, to use your utmost endeavors that all these Persons, 
whose names are inserted in tlie laws of this Commonwealth, 
who are styled Conspirators and absentees, and all other per- 
sons that have since gone to our enemies, and have taken an 
active part with them in any way or manner whatever, might 
never return to us again, or enjoy any estate they left behind 
them ; and that you use your endeavours that no compensa- 
tion be made to any Person or Persons of the above descrip- 
tion for any of their estates already sold, and to have all 
that are confiscated sold and applied to Public use." 

Any person who carefully studies the internal history 
of this period must admit that the mass of honest and 
well meaning people had to bear a vast amount of real 
hardships, if not actual wrongs. There was a condi- 
tion of affairs, therefore, which called for the exercise 
by all parties of the greatest candor, prudence, and 
thoughtfulness. But the misfortune of the times was, 
that the war had brought forward men whose courage 
and efficiency had given them position and influence, 
but who had neither that knowledge of affairs nor that 
natural moderation of spirit and clearness of judg- 
ment which would make them wise leaders in troubled 
periods. Such an one was Daniel Shays, the ostensible 
leader of the insurrection. Such were Luke Day of 
West Springfield, and Adam Wheeler of Hubbardston. 
Such certainly was Job Shattuck, the first man in the 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 199 

Middlesex rising. These were all captains in the Revo- 
lution, of proved courage. They were probably men of 
reasonably honest purposes. But by temperament they 
were rash and obstinate, with habits of mind and with 
a training v/hich unfitted them to meddle with great 
questions of law and statesmanship. With these to 
lead, and with a great mass of discontent behind them, 
it was hardly possible that the unhappy events of the 
succeeding months could have been avoided. 

If the town of Concord was not disloyal, it was not 
because it had not its share of difficulties and poverty 
to endure, or because it did not feel its burden. One 
single fact is full of meaning. In the ten years suc- 
ceeding the time when the town was reduced to its 
present limits by the setting off of a part to Carlisle, 
the population increased 269, or one fifth. In very 
nearly the same period the dwelling-houses were re- 
duced from 193 to 188, and the barns from 174 to 142, 
while the number of acres tilled and the amount of 
stock kept were diminished in like ratio. Take another 
line of inquiry. From the declaration of peace until 
the beginning of the insurrection, a period of about 
three years, the suits brought against inhabitants of 
Concord in the Court of Common Pleas averaged nearly 
fifty each year, or perhaps one to every five families in 
the town. For the three years preceding 1770 in the 
same court the suits averaged less than seven, and this 
too when the population of the town before the setting 
off of Carlisle was a quarter part larger than at the 
later date. The caution displayed in town meetings 
in guarding against unnecessary expenses, the strictly 
just but as strictly economical spirit which pervaded 
its instructions to its Representatives, give us a clear 
indication of what was the real tone of feeling and the 



200 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

real condition of affairs. Now the first impression 
these records make upon the reader is the evident 
poverty of our people. Thus, May 27, 1782, the town 
enjoins James Barrett to use his best endeavors that 
"no one member of the General Court shall receive pay 
as a member and a Committee from the Court at the 
same time." Again, "We instruct you in making 
grants to those who are servants of government, for a 
reward for their services, that you do not grant too 
large sums for the same, and thereby gratify an avari- 
cious disposition in them, and make those places of 
trust lucrative." What the town's idea of lucrative 
pay might be, and how tight a rein it kept, may be 
understood by reading the vote passed just before 
Mr. Barrett's election: "Voted, that the person who 
should be chosen, should receive six shillings per day 
while in actual service, an account of which time he 
should bring to the Town, and if it should be that their 
pay should be more than six shillings per day, then in 
that case the Representative who shall be chosen shall 
be hereby directed to bring the overplus to the Town 
Treasury." The next year, 1783, Joseph Hosmer, 
member elect, is thus instructed: "Sir, in levying 
taxes upon the good people of this Commonwealth, 
you will be very careful and lay no more upon them 
under their present burdened circumstances than is of 
absolute necessity. . . . You will oppose all extrava- 
gant grants of money and salaries to servants of Gov- 
ernment. . . . You will op])ose all new grants of every 
kind for past services of soldiers and officers, but see to 
it that all old promises are speedily fulfilled. " A year 
or two later it is suggested that the fascination of the 
town of Boston leads the General Court to hold long 
sessions, in which "there is a small proportion of 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 201 

business done," and that, if the General Court should 
emigrate into the country, perhaps " business would be 
despatched with greater expedition, as the members 
would have but little to do other than that for which 
their constituents have chosen them. . , . And while 
money is scarce among us, we think that should the 
Court be removed the pay of the members might be 
reduced." 

The town was as anxious to discover the causes of 
the existing poverty, and to remove them, as it was to 
prevent the creation of new burdens. Its action on the 
whole is creditable to the foresight and good judgment 
of those who directed its counsels. It uniformly dis- 
couraged the emission of any more paper money. It as 
uniformly encouraged a speedy return to specie pay- 
ment. The scarcity of gold and silver was attributed 
largely to the extravagance of that portion of the com- 
munity who, by speculation, or by successful privateer- 
ing, or by fortunate contracts, had grown rich, while 
the mass had grown poor. Discarding the homelier 
domestic products, these people sought from abroad 
luxuries which could be paid for only in hard money. 
A letter from London, published in an August number 
of the " Salem Gazette " for 1786, speaks of this vast 
importation, not to be paid for without severe exertions 
by so young a country. It adds, that an American ship 
had come in recently freighted principally with specie. 
Very distinct notice is taken of this mischievous ten- 
dency in the instructions of the town to its old Repre- 
sentative, Joseph Hosmer, May 25, 1786: "We lament 
that measures have not been more effectually taken by 
the General Court to counteract the fatal tendency of 
that excessive fondness for foreign manufactures which 
has so remarkably prevailed in this State for years 



202 CONCORD DURING THE SIIAYS REBELLION. 

past, which, while it has drained us of our money, has 
put a stop to our improving in useful branches of 
manufacture. The daily complaints which are made 
for the want of employment lead us to enjoin you to 
use your utmost exertions in the General Court, that 
such farther duties may be laid on these foreign 
articles, especially those which are articles of mere 
luxury, or which may be procured within ourselves, as 
shall lessen the quantity imported, and that encourage- 
ment be given, by premiums or otherwise, on articles 
of our own manufactures. . . . We are fully convinced 
that while the present system of trade is pursued . . . 
our distresses must increase and ruin overtake us." 
These extracts seem to open to us the very thoughts of 
the fathers. They desired to preserve moderation in 
counsel. They would use, even for the removal of 
heaviest burdens, only legitimate measures. Neverthe- 
less they felt those burdens acutely. 

How could it be otherwise ? Eight years of war had 
greatly decreased the producing power of the town, and 
tasked in every conceivable way its resources. The 
varying value of the currency and stagnation in busi- 
ness made it uncertain whether what might be produced 
would be sold, and if sold, equally uncertain what 
would be received in payment. The following notice, 
which appeared in a magazine published in a neighbor- 
ing town, gives a lifelike picture of the straits to 
which people were reduced in business affairs by the 
scarcity of good money : " Those who have contracted 
with the printer for wood are desired to bring it imme- 
diately. Indian Corn, Cyder, and Pork are likewise 
received from those who engaged or incline to bring 
those articles. They are wanted now, and will not 
answer if the bringing of them is delayed, as is too 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 203 

often the case, until the printer is otherwise supplied. 
If not brought within four weeks, Pork excepted, Cash 
only will answer." 

Added to all other burdens were heavy taxes. For 
1780 and the five succeeding years the taxes averaged 
nine thousand dollars in specie. The town had then 
about half its present population. Only a generation 
ago ^ our valuation was less than one quarter what it is 
now; and in 1785 it could not have been over one 
twelfth as large. It is probable that a tax of one hun- 
dred thousand dollars now would be far less onerous 
than nine thousand dollars then. 

But the time was at hand when no measures through 
the ordinary legal channels could satisfy. As early 
as 1781 and 1782 outbreaks of great seriousness had 
occurred at Northampton, at Hatfield, at Springfield, 
at Groton in our own county, and no doubt in many 
other places. In the summer of 1786 nearly simulta- 
neous gatherings of extra-legal, if not illegal bodies, 
called Conventions of Towns to consider grievances, 
were held in most of the counties. Prudent and loyal 
men took part in these assemblies. But on the whole 
these conventions exercised a pernicious influence, 
increasing instead of allaying the existing disaffection. 
An address, 2 signed and circulated about this time by a 
body of gentlemen in Bristol County, shows to what 
lengths people of position and respectability were 
prepared to go : — 

" "Whereas the good people of this Commonwealth have 
for some time past been very much distressed and embar- 
rassed by the too vigorous execution of the civil law even to 

1 1840, ^626,810. 

2 Boston Centinel, August 12, 1786. 



204 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

the ruin of many honest men and their families ; and whereas 
the honorable gentlemen of the Convention of the County of 
Bristol have petitioned the Great and General Court for 
some relief in that respect, but could obtain none ; and 
Tvhereas the above calamity is daily increasing and threatens 
to involve the great part of the people in beggary and ruin, 
unless speedily prevented, — Therefore, in order to prevent 
any farther progress of such destructive proceedings, we, the 
subscribers, do firmly agree, and engage to unite, as one 
man, and that we will to the utmost of our power oppose 
and prevent the sitting of the Inferior Court of Common 
Pleas for the County of Bristol, or any other courts which 
shall attempt to sit for the purpose of taking property by 
distress, and all publick vendues of property taken by dis- 
tress, even at the risk of our lives and fortunes, until a 
redress of the present grievances shall be obtained." 

Thus encouraged, violent men proceeded to take vio- 
lent measures. The first step was to stop in all the 
shiretowns the sessions of the Court of Common Pleas, 
by whose action alone debts could be enforced. But 
one wrong generally necessitates another to uphold it. 
To shield the leaders in these acts of violence from 
indictment and punishment, the next step was to forbid 
the sitting of the Supreme Judicial Court, which had 
cognizance of such acts. Open rebellion naturally 
followed, dwindling finally in the Western counties into 
mere rapine, and then coming to an ignominious end. 

The action of Concord throughout these trying expe- 
riences was such as can be looked back upon with 
pleasure. The scanty details of a town record do not 
register the spirit which is in a people. The tradition 
is that, while many of the towns were openly inimical 
to the government, the sentiment here was thoroughly 
loyal. This is confirmed by the testimony of the his- 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 205 

torian of the rebellion, who says that Middlesex was 
thought to be more ready than most of the counties to 
support the laws, and especially that it was believed 
"that the local circumstances of Concord made it an 
eligible spot for the serious exertions of government." 
There is not on record a single line which openly or 
covertly sustains violent measures. Language like the 
following,^ written and voted in the heat of the diffi- 
culty, proves that there were men here who saw to the 
very heart of the disease of the body politic : " Many 
of the evils complained of we conceive to be erroneously 
called grievances, and that they are such as must be 
removed, if they are removed at all, by the revival of 
private virtue." As the narrative proceeds, it will 
plainly appear that, while the course of our people con- 
tinued to be conciliatory, it became more and more 
resolutely loyal. 

On the 29th day of June, 1786, the irritation in 
Middlesex County first assumed an organized form. 
On that day committees from Groton, Shirley, Pep- 
perell, Townsend, and Ashby met at Groton. These 
five towns occupied the whole of that northwest corner, 
which, projecting from the main body of Middlesex, 
laps Worcester County on the north. Numerically 
these towns had then vastly more weight in the county 
than now. For they were a full eighth of the popula- 
tion, while to-day they are but a twenty-eighth. The 
soul and the body too of the Middlesex insurrections 
were in this little, and in a comparative sense remote 
locality. With one possible exception, all the leaders 
in the September riots were from these towns, and nine 
tenths if not the whole of their followers. Of those 
who in 1787 received pardon upon taking an oath of 
1 Instructions to James Barrett, October 12, 1786. 



206 CONCORD DURING THE SIIAYS REBELLION. 

allegiance, one was from Framingham, fifteen from 
Westford, two hundred and ten from the five towns, 
and not one from the remaining thirty-three towns of 
the county. 

At this distance of time it is not possible to ascertain 
the reasons for this condition of affairs. Presumably 
the nearness of these towns to that portion of Worcester 
County which proved to be the stronghold of disloyal 
action, and the closer social and political relations 
which grew out of such nearness, had something to do 
with it. This presumption is greatly strengthened 
when we consider that from 1767 to 1785 there was a 
persistent effort made by the towns on both sides of the 
border to erect a new county out of the fragments taken 
from the other two ; and that the Middlesex insurgents 
in both their attempts to stop the courts had reinforce- 
ments from Worcester County. The burden of debt 
and taxation seemed to press with peculiar heaviness 
upon this locality. The principal business of many of 
the public meetings of these towns appears to have 
been to vote on the question of the abatement of taxes; 
twenty, thirty, and even fifty persons having in one of 
these towns (Groton) petitioned in a single year for 
such abatement. During the five years preceding the 
outbreak, the suits brought against the people of these 
towns must be numbered by hundreds, and almost by 
thousands, and exceed by many times those of any 
former period. In Groton one quarter, and probably 
one third, of all the adult male population were in that 
period subjected to the irritation and expense of a 
lawsuit. 

But whatever the cause, the action of these towns had 
from the outset a revolutionary flavor. Early in 1781, 
Groton and Shirley appointed delegates to meet at 



CONCOKD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 207 

Concord with the committees of other towns to consider 
grievances. What became of this proto-convention, 
whether it really met, or whether Concord refused to 
entertain it, or whether it was a failure from the begin- 
nino- neither town record nor tradition tells. In the 
year of the outbreak all these towns refused to elect 
Representatives to the General Court, and were heavily 
fined on account of such failure to elect. This cut 
them off, and no doubt was intended to cut them off, 
from the ordinary and peaceful modes of seeking redress 
of grievances. Two days before the committees of the 
five towns came together, Groton, the largest of these 
towns, at a legal meeting, had a series of violent 
articles submitted for its consideration by sixty-eight 
of its voters. The following are some of the most 
striking of these articles: "5th. To see if the town 
will vote not to have any Inferior Court. . . . 7th. To 
see if the town will vote not to have more than one 
attorney in a county to draw writs, and that he be paid 
the same as the State's attorney. 8th. To see if the 
town will vote that there be a stop put to all lawsuits 
of a civil nature until there is a greater circulation of 
money than there is at present. . . . 13th. To see if the 
town will vote that the first holders of public securities 
shall draw their full sum and interest ; and all those 
that have purchased securities shall give in on oath 
what they gave for the same, and shall receive no more 
of the public treasury, including interest. . . . 15th. 
To see if the town will vote to choose a Committee of 
Safety, to see that there is no more infringement made 
on our injured rights and privileges, and act anything 
relative to the above articles, or any other things, 
which may be necessary for the good of the public at 
large." "What is interesting in these articles, as show- 



208 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

ing the tendency to political disintegration which 
existed, is the obvious conviction on the part of their 
framers that one single town of a single county had a 
right to veto the laws which had been created by all, 
whenever they seemed to it distasteful or oppressive. 
After consideration, these articles were referred to a 
committee of five, of which Job Shattuck was one, with 
discretionary powers to act as they saw fit. 

Two days after, the committee of the five towns met, 
chose Captain John Nutting of Groton Moderator, voted 
to issue a circular inviting the other towns of the 
county to send delegates to a convention to be held in 
Concord, August 23, "to consult on matters of public 
grievance and embarrassment, and also to find out 
means of redress. " Twenty-one, possibly a few more, 
of the forty towns of the county were represented at the 
first meeting of this convention. Action in different 
parts of the county greatly varied. The towns in the 
northwest, as we have seen, called the gathering into 
existence. The central towns for the most part accepted 
the invitation, but in many cases limited their repre- 
sentatives by the most prudent and conservative instruc- 
tions. The towns of the lower or southern tier either 
remained away silently, or, as in the cases of Medford 
and Newton, sent back spirited remonstrances and 
refusal. Concord appointed Isaac Hubbard, Captain 
David Brown, Jonas Lee, Joseph Chandler, and Samuel 
Bartlett its delegates, and then by direct vote instructed 
them "to oppose every unconstitutional measure that 
may be proposed by said convention, and strictly to 
adhere to the rules prescribed in the Constitution of 
this Commonwealth in all the transactions of the 
same ; to oppose the emission of paper money, and to 
take every measure to encourage industry, frugality, 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION 209 

and good economy." The convention, having voted as 
a sort of preamble that it considered itself fully justi- 
fied in its present mode of meeting by the Constitution, 
and that it would strictly adhere to the Constitution in 
all its proceedings, enumerated ten grievances (to 
which in October it added seven more), voted to publish 
them with an address to the people, and then adjourned 
to meet again in the same place, October 3. 

But the conduct of affairs had now passed out of the 
control of conventions, constitutional or otherwise. 
Only six days after the adjournment of the Middlesex 
meeting, a mob, variously estimated from five hundred 
to fifteen hundred men and boys, armed with guns, 
swords, and clubs, assembled at Northampton. In the 
politest of language it informed the Court of Common 
Pleas, then about to open, that it would be inconven- 
ient for the Court to sit for the despatch of business. 
A hint thus backed was equal to a command. The 
Court adjourned. The mob remained till midnight to 
guard against the return of the judges, and then dis- 
persed. 

One week later, September 5th, an armed gathering 
under Captain Adam Wheeler of Hubbardston sur- 
rounded the Court House at Worcester. The resolute 
Chief Justice, General Artemas Ward of Revolution- 
ary memory, pressed forward until his clothing was 
pierced by the bayonets of the insurgents. Finally, 
unwilling to kill or injure him, the leader permitted 
him to address the crowd from the Court House steps, 
which he did with great power; but in vain, and the 
Court was forced to adjourn. 

One week more and the Courts were to meet at 
Concord. Naturally its people were greatly disturbed, 
• 14 



210 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

and ready to use all proper measures to prevent the 
recurrence in their quiet town of the scenes of the last 
fortnight. A meeting was held, September 9, "in 
which, after seriously and deliberately conversing on 
the matter, it was voted that the late measures taken 
in the two counties, viz. Hampshire and Worcester, in 
putting a stop to the proceeding of the Courts of Justice 
in them, was alarming, and to declare our utter abhor- 
rence of such riotous conduct; and farther voted to 
choose a respectable Committee to meet such from the 
other towns in this County, who may send such to use 
their utmost endeavors to calm the people's minds 
that meet on the next week for the stopping the Court 
that is to meet here." The committee chosen was 
Major Joseph Hosmer, the Rev. Mr. Ripley, Mr. 
Samuel Bartlett, Jonas Hey wood, Esq., and Captain 
David Brown, "which Committee was by the Town 
enjoined as soon as may be to prepare a Circular, and 
lay the same before the Town for its acceptance." The 
meeting was adjourned half an hour "to give said 
Committee an opportunity to set." "At the time 
affixed the Town met and the Committee reported a 
Draught they had prepared, which was several times 
read and accepted by a full majority. " The closing 
lines of the record of this meeting give us a vivid sense 
of the scantness of the time which remained in which 
to prepare for an emergency that, in spite of so many 
warnings, had evidently come to those people with a 
sense of unexpectedness. They run thus : " The Town 
then proceeded to choose a Committee to write several 
Coppys, as many as they could possibly disperse, and to 
send them to as many towns as they could by any 
means." 

The following is the address : — 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 211 



To THE Town of 

Gentlemen, — Alarmed at the threatening aspect of our 
affairs, this town has this clay held a meeting, and declared, 
unanimously, their utter disapprobation of the disorderly 
proceedings of a number of persons in the counties of 
Hampshire and Worcester in preventing the sitting of the 
Courts there. And apprehending the like may be attempted 
in this county and probably attended with very dangerous 
consequences, we have thought it advisable to endeavor, in 
conjunction with as many of the neighboring towns as we 
can give seasonable information to, by lenient measures to 
dissuade from such rash conduct as may involve the State in 
anarchy and confusion, and the deprecated horrors of civil 
war. We conceive tlie present uneasiness of the people to 
be not altogether groundless ; and although many designing 
men, enemies to the present government, may wish and actu- 
ally are fomenting uneasiness among the people, yet we are 
fully persuaded that the views of by far the greater part are 
to obtain redress of what they conceive to be real grievances. 
And since the method they have taken cannot fail of meet- 
ing the disapprobation of every friend of peace and good 
order, we cannot but hope, from what we know of the stren- 
uous exertions which have been made by the towns around 
us, and in which those disorders above mentioned now exist, 
to purchase at the expense of blood our independence, and 
the great unanimity with which they have established our 
present government ; and from what we know of the real 
grounds of their complaints, were lenient measures used, and 
a number of towns united to endeavor, by every rational 
argument, to dissuade those who may seem refractory from 
measures which tend immediately to destroy the fair fabric 
of our government, and to join in legal and constitutional 
measures to obtain redress of what may be found to be real 
grievances, they would be attended with happy effects. We 
have, therefore, chosen a Committee to act in concert with 
the neighboring towns, for the purpose of mediating between 



212 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

opposiug parties, should they meet. And we cannot but 
hope our united endeavors to support the dignity of gov- 
ernment and prevent the effusion of blood will meet with 
general approbation, and be attended with happy conse- 
quences. 

If the above should meet with your approbation, we re- 
quest you to choose some persons to meet a Committee of 
this town, chosen for that purpose, at the house of Captain 
Oliver Brown, innholder in Concord, on Monday evening or 
Tuesday morning next, that we may confer together, and 
adopt measures which may be thought to be best calcu- 
lated for the attainment of the ends above proposed. We 
are, gentlemen, with great esteem and friendship, your 
humble servants, 

Joseph Hosmer, 

in behalf of the Town Committee. 
Concord, September 9, 1786. 

There can be no doubt that the action of the town 
was hailed with satisfaction by all loyal people, and 
excited great hopes in the minds of those best fitted to 
judge of the situation. A writer in the " Massachusetts 
Gazette," on the very day of the riot, refers to the 
"measures taken by the town of Concord, calculated 
to prevent any disorder which might arise in the 
county this day by enlightening and composing the 
minds of such honest and generally well affected citi- 
zens as may have been misled by artful insinuation." 

The course of the town was warmly approved by the 
State authorities. Governor Bowdoin, moved by the 
critical condition of affairs, had, September 8, called 
together such of the Council, Senate, and members of 
the Supreme Court as could be reached. The decision 
of that meeting was that force was the only resort, 
" After hearing, " runs the report, " General Brooks and 
Mr. Hall, it was unanimously voted that aid exterior 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 213 

to the County of Middlesex would be required to protect 
the Courts at their session in Concord Tuesday next. 
Also voted that the artillery companies of Dorchester 
and Roxbury be called to march under General Brooks 
to support the Courts, and that his Excellency order 
such companies from Suffolk as may be necessary. " 
Still disturbed, the Governor called the same gentlemen 
together Sunday, September 10, at half past two p. m. 
Justice Savage of the Court of Common Pleas for 
Middlesex was stating "that the minds of the people 
were greatly irritated, and that they had expressed a 
determination to oppose the sitting of the Courts, and 
he apprehended serious consequences from measures 
that have been taken, and expressed a wish that lenient 
measures may be adopted. " Says the clerk, " Captain 
Ingraham of Concord arrived this moment, and pre- 
sented a copy of an address which the town of Concord 
at their meeting yesterday agreed upon. " At once the 
whole feeling changed. It was the opinion of all that 
the marching of the troops should be stopped. Gover- 
nor Bowdoin issued the following command : — 

Boston, September 10, 1786. 
Whereas the town of Concord have transmitted to me 
an attested copy of their proceedings at the meeting yester- 
day, which appeared to me well calculated to remove any 
expected disturbances at the opening of the Courts of Com- 
mon Pleas, &c., in Concord on Tuesday next in an effectual 
and pacific manner, and consequently there will be no neces- 
sity for the aid of the militia. It is therefore, upon con- 
sultation, my order to you to suspend executing the orders 
you have already received from me, the whole of which I 
have thought fit to countermand. 

I am, sir, with great respect, 

Your humble servant, 
To Major Gen. J. Bkooks. James Bowdoin. 



214 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

Trouble was expected in Bristol County. A copy of 
the Concord address was despatched to General Cobb, 
with the suggestion that it might be wise to take 
similar measures in that county, for " it is considered 
of the utmost importance that no blood be shed. " The 
warm and friendly letter of the Secretary of State to 
Major Hosmer lets us down into the real feelings of 
those in authority. 

Boston, September 10, 1786. 

Dear Sir, — The address of the town of Concord to the 
several towns in the county of Middlesex does the town 
great honor ; and I cannot but think that the measures you 
have adopted will have a happy tendency to conciliate the 
minds of the people, and be productive of great good. Your 
address came in a critical moment, which his Excellency 
communicated to the Judges of the Supreme Judicial Court, 
and several gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of 
Representatives, who were assembled by the desire of the 
Governor to consult on measures necessary to be adopted at 
this very alarming crisis of our affairs, who expressed their 
approbation, in warmest terms, respecting the proceeding of 
your town. And be assured that the measures that were 
taken in consequence thereof gave me the higliest satisfac- 
tion ; and as a convincing proof, I have set myself down 
this evening to express it to my good friend Major Hosmer, 
whose goodness of heart I have long been acquainted with 
through very perilous times. . . . 

It is the greatest grief to see people, who might be the 
happiest in the world, adopt measures to sap the very foun- 
dations of our excellent Constitution. I am sensible that 
we are under great embarrassments, and there are griev- 
ances, but in my humble opinion they are most of them really 
imaginary. If a little more industry and economy were 
practised by the community at large, they would be very 
happy. But there are some idle people, going from county 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 215 

to county, inflaming the minds of many, filling their heads 
with stories of the most improbable nature, sowing sedition, 
and making every attempt to overthrow our excellent Con- 
stitution, The stopping of the Courts of Common Pleas, in 
the several counties, is but a small part of their infernal 
plan, which many good people, who join these persons, are 
little aware of, but sooner or later they will be acquainted 
with it. I have not time to add farther, except wishing that 
the gentlemen who shall meet at Concord Tuesday next, 
upon the subject matter of your address, may have divine 
direction in their deliberations. 

I am, sir, with respect, 

Your friend and humble servant, 

John Avery. 
Hon. Joseph Hosmek, Esq. 

Notwithstanding this official approval, after events 
proved that such a course, as a matter of policy, was a 
mistake. Wherever the mob was boldly confronted, as 
by Major Shepherd at Springfield, by General Cobb 
at Taunton, and by General Brooks at Cambridge, it 
shrank from the encounter, while the kindest appeals 
were listened to with contempt. Still, one cannot 
regret measures which were so full of the spirit of 
moderation and of respect even for the mistaken ideas 
of honest men. When the sword was drawn, it was 
with the consent of all thoughtful people. 

In the afternoon of Monday, September 11th, a body 
of men and boys, numbering perhaps a hundred, 
marched into the square in front of the Court House. 
The real leader of this party was Job Shatfcuck of 
Groton. Associated with him, and altogether more 
noisy and forthputting, was Nathan Smith of Shirley. 
Oliver Parker and Benjamin Page of Groton were also 



216 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

present and prominent. A brief account of these men 
will help us to understand what influences were then at 
work in the social and political life. 

Job Shattuck w^as a man past mid-life, the son of a 
respectable farmer, and himself one of the largest land- 
owners in Groton. He had filled various places of 
trust in his native town, and near the close of the war 
had been for three years selectman. At the early age 
of nineteen he was one of the two thousand Massachu- 
setts men whom Colonel John Winslow led to Nova 
Scotia to aid Colonel Monckton in that expedition 
against the Acadiana to which " Evangeline " has given 
such painful immortality. A minute-man in the Revo- 
lution, he was at Concord fight, and in the battle of 
Bunker Hill. Promoted to a captaincy, he led a com- 
pany to Boston after its evacuation, and later another 
to that campaign which closed with Burgoyne's sur- 
render. Strong and athletic in person, skilful in the 
use of the broadsword and proud of the accomplish- 
ment, utterly insensible to fear, his position and means, 
his remarkable physical vigor, and his good war rec- 
ord gave him great influence over his neighbors and 
townsmen. But he had qualities which made his influ- 
ence of no advantage to them. He was uneducated, by 
nature obstinate, and full of strong prejudices. In 
temperament he was what would be called a fighting 
man, ready to give battle to maintain an opinion or 
to resent a real or fancied injury. Added to this were 
ideas of liberty and personal rights of the broadest 
kind. That, when the necessary contraction of currency 
and burden of debt and taxation were working practical 
injustice in all quarters, he should be in the forefront 
of the insurrection was natural. That thirty years 
later, when all clear-sighted men saw how nearly that 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 217 

insurrection had brought the experiment of self-govern- 
ment to a disastrous close, " he should look upon no act 
of his life with more satisfaction," may speak volumes 
for his honesty, but very little for his fitness to meddle 
with deep questions of political economy. He had 
already been engaged in an affair known as the Groton 
riots. In 1781 a State tax was levied, which, because 
it was to be paid in silver or its equivalent, was called 
"the silver tax." This tax Shattuck resisted. For 
two hours, with sixteen companions armed with clubs, 
he threatened and bullied the unfortunate constables 
to whom its collection was intrusted. Having pleaded 
guilty at the October term of the Supreme Judicial 
Court held at Concord, he was sentenced to pay a fine 
of XIO and the costs of prosecution. Such were the 
character and antecedents of the man who undertook 
to settle whether or not Middlesex County should 
continue under legal authority. 

Nathan Smith was a man two years younger than 
Shattuck, forty-eight years old. He too had been a 
soldier in the Revolution and noted for daring. He 
was a great pugilist, and counted skill in that art the 
highest possible evidence of manly character. In one 
of his frequent fights he had lost one eye. He was 
quarrelsome in the grain, coarse in speech, and given 
to drink. Tradition, which rarely fails to preserve the 
salient points of character, remembers him as a glutton, 
who used every Thanksgiving day to eat a whole goose, 
and wash it down with the oil which had been tried 
from it in cooking. A dark stain was on his reputa- 
tion. In January, 1783, he had been indicted for 
having in possession with intent to utter twenty counter- 
feit bills of c£50 each. To avoid trial he absconded 
or else concealed himself. Loammi Baldwin, High 



218 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

Sheriff of Middlesex County, testified that he had sum- 
moned him at his last place of residence, and by 
advertisement five weeks in Willis's "Independent 
Chronicle," and that he had publicly called him at the 
several Courts of General Sessions in the county. 
Thereupon the sentence of outlawry was pronounced. 
Where he was, and how he escaped arrest then and 
after the affair at Concord, is uncertain. The neigh- 
borhood story is that he had a secret closet in his own 
house to which he retired when officers of the law were 
in the vicinity. Certainly after the collapse of the 
rebellion he resided in his native town. Ilis coarse 
and dissipated habits clung to him in later life. At 
ninety-six he died in miserable solitude, possessed of 
no property except a remnant of the pension which a 
forgiving country granted him. 

Of the lesser actors, Oliver Parker and Benjamin 
Page were men not unlike Shattuck, as honest, hardly 
as persevering, and certainly not as influential. Par- 
ker was forward in the Groton riots, was fined £8 and 
costs, and ordered to recognize in the sum of £100, with 
sureties to keep the peace three years. He escaped 
conviction for his course at Concord, and died early in 
1790, poor and deeply in debt. Page, for his part, was 
found guilty of sedition, fined £100, and ordered to 
obtain sureties to keep the peace in the sum of £200. 

These were fair specimens of the mob who, for the 
space of a year, filled every part of Massachusetts with 
turmoil. They were mostly officers of the lower grades 
in the Revolution. They were all bold to reckless- 
ness, generally narrow-minded and obstinate, often 
needy, sometimes unprincipled, but more frequently 
sincere and patriotic according to their light. 

But to return to the men whom we left standing in 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 219 

Concord Square. Monday night a heavy rain set in, 
which continued through a part if not the whole of the 
next day. The insurgents found shelter in the Court 
House, in the neighboring barns, and in shanties or 
booths built of boards stripped from the fences. Tues- 
day morning they assumed something like military 
array, occupying the square in front of the Court 
House, and setting guards to keep people out of it. 
Such as attempted to pass through were treated with 
insolence, and in several instances bayonet thrusts 
were wantonly made both at horses and men. Several 
barrels of rum were on tap at convenient places, and a 
load of hay was procured for the use of parties from a 
distance who Were expected to arrive. At nine o'clock 
Smith bestirred himself, and thus addressed the by- 
standers : " I do not know who you are, or from whence 
you have come. I am going to give the Court four 
hours to agree to our terms. I and my party will force 
them to it. " During the morning small parties dropped 
in until the whole band was estimated to number two 
hundred. About half past two a man, acting as ser- 
geant, with two drummers and fifers, went with a small 
party up Main Street, and returned in a half-hour at 
the head of ninety horsemen from Worcester and 
Hampshire Counties, who were under the lead of 
Captain Adam Wheeler of Hubbardston and Benjamin 
Converse of Hardwick. By this time, what with rum 
and what with natural temper. Smith became out- 
rageous. He beat round with a drum for recruits, and 
with "horrid oaths and imprecations" declared that 
" any person who did not follow his drum and join his 
standard should be driven out of the town at the point 
of the bayonet, let them be Court, town committee, or 
what else." His threats, however, did not secure many 



220 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

recruits. A short time after, he again addressed the 
spectators with still greater violence: "As Christ laid 
down his life to save the world, so will I lay down my 
life to suppress the government from all triannical 
oppression, and you who are willing to join in this 
here affair may fall into our ranks. Those who do 
not, after two hours, shall stand the monuments of 
God's saving mercy." Finally he became so savage 
that his own party had to interfere, and the Worcester 
leaders declared that, if he did not take back his words, 
they would go home and leave the movement to its 
fate. This seems to have suppressed him, for we hear 
nothing more of him for the rest of the day, or indeed 
for the succeeding months. 

Meanwhile the Peace Convention met on Tuesday at 
Brown's Tavern, adjourned to the meeting-house, and 
organized by the choice of Isaac Stearns of Bedford, 
Chairman, and Samuel Bartlett of Concord, Secretary. 
Two Committees were appointed. The first, of which 
Rev. Ezra Ripley was chairman, was to inform the 
Justices of the Courts of the assembling of the Con- 
vention, and of its purpose to dissuade the armed force 
now gathered at the Court House from violent measures. 
The second Committee was " to confer with the armed 
men paraded before the Court House, and to know 
their views and designs in thus assembling. Some of 
the ablest and most influential men in the county were 
on this Committee, as can be seen from the list, — Dr. 
Josiah Bartlett, Hon. Joseph Hosmer, Hon. Eleazer 
Brooks, Colonel William Prescott, Colonel John 
Buttrick, Mr. John Bishop, and Mr. Samuel White. 
Dr. Bartlett of Charlestown was the father of Dr. 
Josiah Bartlett, who, by more than fifty years of faith- 
ful service in his profession, has become so thoroughly 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 221 

identified with our town. He had himself been a 
surgeon in the public service, both by land and sea, 
through the whole eight years of the Revolution. He 
was a close friend of General Brooks, the head of the 
Middlesex militia, and was in his lifetime Representa- 
tive, Senator, Councillor, and in all respects, in his 
profession and out of it, a man of mark. Major Joseph 
Hosmer was in many respects the most prominent man 
in the town, and widely known in the county. To a 
great old age he preserved the confidence and esteem of 
his neighbors, having been tried in about as many 
offices of trust as one man could hold or one town 
confer. Of Colonel John Buttrick it is only necessary 
to say that he was the man who at Old North Bridge 
on the 19th of April leaped into the air crying, "Fire, 
fellow soldiers, for God's sake, fire ! " The other 
members of the Committee were persons of the highest 
respectability. It was with just reason expected that 
the representations of this body would have a whole- 
some influence upon the insurgents. But the leaders of 
these, though earnestly requested, refused to send a 
Committee to the Convention, or in any way to point 
out how they wislied a redress of grievances, saying, 
"they, and not the Convention, represented the 
County." No stipulations of any sort in favor of a 
peaceable opening of the courts could be obtained. 
Finally, at one o'clock this note was received: — 

To the Honorable Justices of the Court of General Sessions 
of the Peace and Court of Common Pleas for the County 
of Middlesex, etc. 

The voice of the people of this County is, that the Court 
of the General Sessions of the Peace and the Court of Com- 
mon Pleas shall not enter this Court House until such time 



222 co^'CORD during the shays rebellion. 

as the people shall have a redress of a number of grievances 
they labor under at present, which will be set forth in a 
petition or remonstrance to the next General Court. 

Job Shattuck. 
Concord, September 12, 1786. 

Farther arguments obtained this trifling modification 
indorsed on the back of the original document: — 

Half past 3 o'clock. 
Since writing the within, it is agreed that the Court of 
Sessions may open and adjourn to the last Tuesday in No- 
vember next without going into the Court House. 

Job Shattuck. 

The Convention "then voted that Dr. Bartlett and 
his Committee should wait upon the Justices with the 
aforesaid writing, and likewise state the particulars of 
their conference with the armed men." Soon they 
returned, stating that the Justices would like the 
opinion of the Convention as to the opening of the 
Courts. That opinion was conveyed in the following 
communication. 

That it be recommended to the Honorable Justices of the 
Court of Common Pleas and Court of Sessions to suspend 
for the present term the execution of all public business, on 
account of the armed force now paraded to oppose their 
proceedings. 

By order of the Committee. 

JosiAH Bartlett, Chab^man. 

The result of these interviews can be best told in the 
very language of the Judge, Samuel Phillips Savage, 
which gives, from the pen of one of the actors, a vivid 
picture of the furious nature of the mob, and uncon- 
sciously of his own courage and energy. 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 223 

" Dr. Bartlett of Charlestown, a very intelligent gentle- 
man, delivered the final determination of the mob. ... To 
ripen an answer I desired the sentiments of the Committee, 
■who were almost unanimous in the sentiment to give up 
effort to hold court. ... I asked them to get the opinion of 
the whole body. . . . They returned with a paper which Dr. 
Bartlett said expressed the opinion of three fourths and 
probably of seven eighths of the gentlemen. ... I then at 
the request of my brethren desired Dr. Bartlett to return to 
the mob for our answer, — that as the Justices of the Court 
were held in duress by a body of men in arms, they neither 
could nor would act. Which answer the Doctor decHned de- 
livering, assuring us that he was afraid, and told us, as did 
the rest of the gentlemen of the Committee, that such was 
the temper of those people that, unless something was done, 
they feared the house in which we were would be pulled 
down. We then after some pause very reluctantly consented 
to return the humiliating answer that we would not act." 

In their report to the Governor the Committee say : — 

"After many conferences with the armed men who were 
assembled in that town, and endeavors by every possible 
means to convince their leaders of the impropriety of their 
conduct, to show the ill consequences of shutting the doors 
of justice, to dissuade them from violence, this body can- 
not forbear to express their disagreeable and painful sensa- 
tion that their endeavors to dissuade from rash and unlawful 
measures have been ineffectual. They declare their utter 
abhorrence of the measures adopted by the body in arms, 
and are fully sensible of the high criminality of such opposi- 
tion to established authority, which, if not speedily prevented, 
must unavoidably involve the Commonwealth in calamities 
innumerable." 

Holland, in his "History of Western Massachusetts," 
falls into a strange error in respect to the objects and 



224 CONCOED DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

real conduct of this Convention. He says (Vol. I. p. 
243) : — 

" At this time a Convention was sitting in the town, and 
for the first time in the Convention movement direct com- 
munications were opened between the deliberative and armed 
bodies, and they acted in concert. It was the day appointed 
for holding the Courts of Middlesex, and the Convention and 
the mob joined in a message to the justices, informing them 
of their determination to resist any attempt to proceed to 
business. The Court was intimidated, and the object of the 
mob accomplished." 

More mistakes could hardly be crowded into so brief 
a space. In the first place this meeting of gentlemen 
at Concord formed no part of the Convention movement 
so called. It was not a gathering either to represent 
grievances or to do away with them. It was a volun- 
tary, and from the briefness of the notice necessarily 
an informal, gathering of persons from the different 
towns of the county. The members of that gathering 
must have been largely persons whose influence from 
the first had been thrown against illegal measures. 
How the thing looked to the man who had direct 
charge of the conference with the rioters can be seen 
from the following entry in Dr. Bartlett's private diary : 
" Sept. 11, 1786. Elected by the Town as a member of 
a Convention at Concord to quell the insurgents who 
had assembled to oppose the Court of Common Pleas. '" 
The ostensible and the real object of the gathering 
was to support government by withholding misguided, 
but as they believed honest men, from acts of sedition 
by candid representations. The call for the gathering 
had received the warm approval of the State authori- 
ties. " The deliberative body " in no other way opened 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 225 

communications with "the armed body " than by using 
its utmost efforts to secure for the Courts peaceable 
possession of the Court House. The only sense in 
which it could be said "to have joined the mob in a 
message to the justices " is, that, when all peaceable 
efforts had failed, it stated to the Court what was a 
simple fact, that " any attempt to proceed in business 
would be useless and dangerous." It is easy enough 
to see now, with all the preceding and succeeding 
events too before us, that this Peace Convention was 
from the outset sure to fail. But it was a humane and 
Christian experiment; and to accuse those who took 
part in it of joining with the mob to intimidate the 
Courts is in the highest degree unjust and absurd. 

At any rate, the slow, and, in a comparative sense, 
moderate course to which they had persuaded the 
leader of the insurgents did not satisfy his followers. 
Deliberation of any sort had not entered into their 
plans. A little after the middle of the afternoon the 
Worcester horsemen and a body of footmen marched up 
Main Street until they came to Jones's Tavern, where 
the Justices then were. They halted and faced to- 
wards the house in a stern and menacing manner. The 
Justices assured them that they should not attempt to 
open the Courts, as the presence of such an armed force 
made it impossible. Hearing this, the party marched 
back to the main body. In a few moments they reap- 
peared, demanding that the verbal promise should be 
repeated in writing. The Justices at this point seem 
to have used a little art, and referred them to the clerk 
of the courts. He, on being applied to, declared that 
he was only a recording officer, and had no authority 
to give any such paper without express orders from the 
Justices. The Justices in the mean time had called for 



226 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

their horses and ridden away, and when the insurgents 
came back again and in vain sought them, the air was 
filled with angry and violent complaints. 

It is admitted that the mob at Concord was made up 
of far poorer material than composed the rank and file 
of similar previous gatherings. The ignorance of some 
of its members was so great that they believed that 
Governor Bow^loin received a salary of -^JSOjOOO, and 
stated this as their greatest grievance. The horsemen 
from Worcester County were indeed a body of strong 
and well equipped men. But the infantry was a motley 
crew. Forty or fifty were boys drawn from curiosity. 
The rest, poorly clad, drenched with rain, bespattered 
with mud, were properly as much objects of pity as of 
fear. Two thirds of them had muskets, half of which 
were furnished with bayonets. The rest had swords 
and clubs. A few had cartridge boxes. By five o'clock 
most of the guns were rendered useless by the rain, 
and three quarters of their owners by rum. At sun- 
down it was thought that thirty could not have been 
brought into rank to resist an attack. Three or four 
companies of trustworthy militia would at any time 
during the day have swept the whole body out of town. 
Long before sunset, many of the rioters were worn out 
and anxious to return home, and were kept only by the 
strenuous efforts of the leaders. By Wednesday morn- 
ing they had all disappeared. Thus ended this painful, 
and in some aspects ludicrous, episode in the annals 
of our town and county. 

The Convention of Towns for the consideration of 
grievances, according to agreement, assembled a second 
time at Concord, October 3, 1786. But it came back 
diminished in numbers. Only eighteen of the forty 



COXCOED DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 227 

towns were now represented. Weston and Lincoln had 
dismissed their delegates, because, as it is quaintly 
reported, "they had no further use for them." The 
aspect of affairs was such, indeed, as might well "give 
pause " to thoughtful people. The insurrection had 
now reached a new stage. At first only the Courts of 
Common Pleas were to be stopped, that honest debtors 
might not be pressed too sharply. But in the last 
week in September, at Springfield and Great Barring- 
ton, the Supreme Judicial Court was interrupted and 
forced to adjourn. This dangerous condition of affairs 
seems to have had its influence upon the members of 
the Convention at Concord. The petition to the General 
Court, adopted previously to its final adjournment, was 
comparatively moderate in tone. It runs thus : — 

Your petitioners, being chosen by their respective towns 
for the purpose of collecting the sentiments of those towns 
which they represent respecting their present grievances, 
and to seek relief in a peaceable, orderly, and constitutional 
way, — viewing with great abhorrence and detestation the 
late riotous proceedings of a rash and inconsiderate body 
of people, in opposing the sitting of the Courts of Justice, 
notwithstanding their leaders did falsely pretend to signify 
the voice of the people in this County in so doing, — and 
having collected the sentiments of the several towns which 
we here represent, do point out the following particulars as 
grievances and pray the honorable Court for redress, viz. : 

1st. The sitting of the General Court in the town of Bos- 
ton, which, for reasons we trust obvious to the honorable 
Court, is by no means adapted to expedite public busi- 
ness. 

2d. That the Court of Common Pleas is burthensome, 
by reason of the extraordinary expense arising therefrom, 
without any considerable advantage to the people. 



228 CONCORD DURING THE SliAYS REBELLION. 

3d. That lawyers are permitted to exact such exorbitaut 
fees to the great injury of many in the community. 

4th. That the salaries of several public officers are greater 
than the ability of the people will admit of. 

5th. The want of a circulating medium has so stagnated 
business that, unless speedily remedied, it will involve the 
greater part of the community in a state of bankruptcy. 

6th. The taking of men's bodies and confining them in 
jail for debt, when they have property sufficient to answer 
the demands of the creditors. 

7th. That the accounts of the United States are not set- 
tled, by which means we apprehend ourselves dispropor- 
tionately burdened. 

8th. That greater duties or imposts are not laid on super- 
fluities imported from foreign nations. 

9th. The manner of electing jurors, as to their qualifica- 
tions and pay. Serving as jurors has been esteemed as a 
burden on the subject, which have been the means of fill- 
ing our boxes with many men entirely unqualified for tliat 
business. 

10th. That such heavy taxes are laid on lands, and no 
encouragement given to agriculture and our own manufac- 
tures. 

11th. That our unappropriated lands are not disposed of 
toward the discharge of our domestic debt. 

12th. That the moneys arising from imposts and excise 
are not appropriated towards the discharge of our foreign debt. 

13th. That the registering of deeds under the present 
establishment is far more expensive than is necessary, as 
the same might be done in several towns. 

14th. That the duties on writs and executions should be 
exacted of the debtors. 

15th. The present fee table, as it now stands, being 
higher, in some instances, than is necessary. 

16th. The present mode of collecting excise, as the same 
might be collected in the several towns at much less expense 
to the government. 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 229 

17th. That the thirtieth article in the Bill of Eights in the 
Constitution is not more strictly attended to, — in admitting 
persons to hold seats in our legislature to enact laws, and 
at the same time hold and exercise the judicial powers of 
government, as thereby our government becomes a govern- 
ment of men and not of laws. 

Your petitioners humbly beg your honors' attention to 
these our grievances, and pray for a speedy redress, and as 
in duty bound will ever pray. 

By order of the Committee. 

Samuel Reed, Chairman. 

October 9th the town of Concord met to consider the 
petition drawn up by the Convention of Towns, and 
voted to take up the same article by article. "The 
first, second, third, fourth, tenth, and sixteenth the 
town accepted as matters of grievance. The fifth, 
sixth, seventh, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, 
fourteenth, and seventeenth the town considered that 
many of them were evils that ought to be rectified by 
the General Court." 

In order that its Representative might clearly under- 
stand the mind of the town on these matters, a Com- 
mittee was appointed to draft instructions. These 
instructions were submitted, read and accepted at an 
adjourned meeting. How firm and wise was the spirit 
of the town the following extracts will show : — "As 
this town has lately declared their utter abhorrence 
and disapprobation of the late disorderly and riotous 
proceedings of a number of infatuated people, in oppos- 
ing by force of arms the Courts of Justice, and thereby 
aiming, apparently at least, to destroy all civil govern- 
ment, we now declare our full determination to support 
and maintain the constitutional authority of this Com- 
monwealth, fully convinced that our obligations here- 



230 CONCORD DURING THE SmVYS REBELLION. 

unto are indispensable. In this determination we are, 
if possible, more fixed by the late violent and treason- 
able opposition to the sitting of the Supreme Judicial 
Courts of this Commonwealth, in some of the upper 
counties, as hereby we are more convinced that the 
designs and wishes of many in the state are not merely 
a redress of grievances, but a total change of our wise 
and happy Constitution of Government. . . . We are 
far from making light of many of the complaints of the 
people; but yet the consideration of the present per- 
plexed and embarrassed state of public affairs is a 
powerful inducement to this town to avoid an unneces- 
sary enumeration of grievances and evils, under which 
we apprehend ourselves to labor. The hands of govern- 
ment should be strengthened, not weakened." Wiser 
or more loyal words could hardly have been penned. 

The fall term of the Supreme Judicial Court was to 
be held in Ca.nibridge, October 31st. Government was 
now thoroughly alarmed. On the 26th, companies in 
all towns adjacent to Cambridge were warned to be 
ready to march at a moment's notice. On the 30th, 
four companies of artillery and three of infantry were 
called out. Early the next morning the troops to the 
number of two thousand poured in. The Billerica 
Artillery Company gained especial credit, having 
marched the day before all the way to Cambridge in a 
driving snow-storm. General Brooks, afterwards Gov- 
ernor, was in command. The adjutant was Colonel 
Hull, whose name is so painfully connected with the 
surrender of Detroit in 1812. This military demon- 
stration accomplished its purpose. Not an insurgent 
appeared. The Court was opened. The Governor re- 
viewed the troops, praised them, and then dismissed 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 231 

them. "It was like a brilliant parade," says an eye- 
witness, and, waxing humorous, adds, "the military 
were like C^fisar, — veni, vidi, vici, — came, saw nothing, 
conquered everything." Concord lost one man by acci- 
dent. And as it was the only death which was directly or 
indirectly occasioned by the Middlesex rising we chroni- 
cle it. William Hey wood, a native of the town, a young 
man of twenty-four, was preparing to join his company. 
That he might clean his musket he discharged it; when 
it burst, and some of the fragments lodged in his skull ; 
and after lingering a few days in great agony he died, 
November 3d. At this session the grand jury found 
bills against Shattuck, Smith, and Parker for treason, 
and Benjamin Page for sedition. 

It was hoped and believed that the approaching ses- 
sion of the Court of Common Pleas at Cambridge would 
occasion no fresh excitement. The Middlesex leaders 
had promised to remain quiet. But as November 28th 
drew near, there were unpleasant rumors. Parties of 
armed men under Parker and Page came as far as 
Concord. Shattuck went on to Weston, where there 
were fifty or sixty more. The Worcester men advanced 
to Shrewsbury. 

There was now an end of half- way measures. War- 
rants for the arrest of Job Shattuck, Oliver Parker, 
and Benjamin Page of Groton, and Nathan Smith and 
John Kelsey of Shirley, were put into the hands of 
Aaron Brown and William Scott. The immediate 
occasion of these warrants was the request of Judge 
Oliver Prescott, one of the best citizens of Groton, who 
stated that " they were dangerous persons, who should 
be restrained of their liberty. " Resistance was expected. 
Rumor said Shattuck had fortified his house. Colonel 



232 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

Benjamin Hitcliborn with seventy horsemen volunteered 
to accompany the officers. Near Concord, Colonel 
Henry Wood of Pepperell joined them with thirty or 
forty more. Smith and Kelsey could not be found. 
Parker and Page were arrested very easily near Concord 
that evening. Shattuck for a few hours evaded pursuit. 
But the next morning it was ascertained that he had 
slept at a neighbor's house. Twelve or fifteen horse- 
men tracked him through the new fallen snow, and 
overtook him near the banks of the Nashua. With the 
reckless courage characteristic of him he resisted, — ■ 
the story was, attacked his pursuers with a broadsword. 
At last a frightful wound, nine inches long, running 
obliquely across the kneepan and severing the capsular 
ligament, brought him to the ground. Even then he 
would not yield ; and only after a cnt which disabled 
his right hand was he captured. He was a pitiable 
object, stained with the mire of a swamp through which 
he had waded, covered with blood, and helpless. He 
was put in a sleigh and brought to Concord jail, and 
thence transferred to Boston. His capturers had ridden 
a hundred miles in the worst of weather between 
Wednesday morning and Thursday night. 

All sorts of wild rumors were circulated. That 
Shattuck had been wantonly hacked to pieces, that his 
wife and children had been abused, and his house 
destroyed. There was a good deal of talk, too, about 
the harsh treatment received during his imprisonment, 
apparently without reason. For a time he was not 
permitted to communicate with his friends. But he 
was placed in an upper room usually given to poor 
debtors in Boston jail, in which was a fireplace and 
some means of ventilation. He had good bedding, a 
nurse, and was attended by the best surgeons that 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 233 

Boston could furnish. Finally, at his own request, he 
was put under the care of Dr. Kittredge of Tewksbury. 
His wounds not healing properly, and his health suffer- 
ing from confinement, he was in April, 1787, released 
on bail. In May he had his trial for high treason. 
There were accusations of a packed jury. S. Hoar was 
foreman and Captain N. Barrett a juryman. There 
could be but one verdict, — guilty. He was sentenced 
to be executed June 28th, reprieved to 26th of July, 
then to September 20th, and finally, on the 12th of 
September, was pardoned by Governor Hancock, who 
had succeeded Governor Bowdoin. Ever after he was a 
good citizen, and apparently respected by his townsmen. 
While his political course must be condemned, and 
while he certainly was rash, obstinate, and a dangerous 
man, there is no reason to doubt that he was brave, 
honest, and in his intentions patriotic. The crutch 
which he always had to use, and the stiff fingers of his 
right hand, were the penalties which he paid for his 
errors. He died, January 13, 1819, aged eighty-four 
years. 

What part the men of Concord took in the closing 
scenes of the Shays insurrection cannot be stated with 
any precision. All that is known is that our part of the 
Middlesex quota of General Lincoln's army, under the 
command of Captain Roger Brown, was attached to 
the regiment of Colonel Harry Woods ; that between 
January 19th and February 26th it marched almost 
to New York line and back again ; that a bounty was 
raised by subscription; and that the town voted "to 
provide the families of those soldiers that were gone 
with the necessaries of life, while absent, if asked 
for." 

It has been very often assumed, with very little reason, 



234 CONCORD DUKING THE SIIAYS EEBELLIOX. 

that the Shays Rebellion, though defeated on the 
field, really accomplished the objects for which it 
was undertaken. That this and other troubles con- 
vinced thoughtful people that a stronger national 
government was a necessity is probable. But a stronger 
government of any kind was the last blessing for which 
the insurgents were seeking. Some slight modifica- 
tions were made of the State law, supposed to be favor- 
able to debtors; such, for instance, as reducing the 
fee table and omitting in each county one session of 
the Court of Common Pleas. But even these trifling 
changes did not work well, and the laws creating them 
were repealed. In respect to most of the special griev- 
ances, the insurrection literally accomplished nothing. 
Even imprisonment for debt, the most real and the 
most unjustifiable of them, lingered for a generation. 
Probably the outbreak followed the natural law, and 
retarded rather than forwarded real reforms. 

The year 1787 brought a great political overturn. 
Governor Hancock was elected chief magistrate of the 
State by nearly four fifths of the votes, while three 
fourths of the House of Representatives and two thirds 
of the Senate and Council were from the opposition 
side. This result was to some extent owing to the 
great personal popularity of John Hancock. In part it 
was the penalty which Governor Bowdoin had to pay 
for resorting to strong measures when they alone were 
sufficient. But more than all else, it proved the exist- 
ence of a wide-spread dissatisfaction among classes of 
persons who were not willing to go to the extremity of 
civil war. And perhaps it is the most triumphant 
vindication of the real wisdom of Governor Bowdoin's 
course that the very men who were elected from a feel- 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 235 

ing of opposition to him, when called to administer 
government, were forced to accept and sustain his 
policy. 

In this political overturn Concord assisted, but not 
with the same unanimity as was shown elsewhere. 
She threw seventy-five votes for Hancock and forty- 
three for Bowdoin. But if she helped to change men, 
she refused to change measures. She had never uttered 
a stronger condemnation of violent men than is con- 
tained in what proved to be her last instructions to a 
Representative. 

To Mr. Isaac Hubbakd : — 

Sir, — The critical period iu which you are appointed to 
represent this town in the General Court points out to us 
the importance of a strict adherence to the principles of our 
Constitution, while we express our sentiments on those 
measures we suppose necessary to be adopted. With real 
sorrow we have seen, in the course of the year past, an 
attempt made by wicked and unreasonable men to destroy 
that Constitution we have so lately established, and to inter- 
rupt the execution of those laws without which our hves, 
property, and everything dear and sacred, would be insecure. 
We should be wanting iu gratitude should we neglect, on 
this occasion, to express our hearty approbation of the wise 
and spirited measures adopted by the legislature for pre- 
venting the calamities* which of late threatened this Com- 
monwealth, and for supporting the dignity and authority of 
our government, and for the effects which have happily fol- 
lowed those measures. We conceive it to be highly expe- 
dient that a similar line of conduct should stiU be preserved, 
in order to perfect peace and tranquihity among us. 

The happy privilege enjoyed by us of choosing annually 
our rulers, men from among ourselves, who must share 
equally with their brethren the weight and burden which may 



236 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

be necessarily laid, and who are responsible to their constit- 
uents for the faithful discharge of their duty, must greatly 
aggravate the folly and madness of those who, under pre- 
tence of procuring a redress of grievances, have drawn the 
sword against their own government and laws ; especially as 
our representatives, if they are men of ability and integrity, 
may remove every real grievance complained of. Many 
causes concur to render our present situation critical and 
distressing. The debts contracted in the late war, public 
and private ; the decay of public faith and credit ; the want 
of public and private virtue ; the shameful neglect of econ- 
omy, frugality, and industry ; and unbounded fondness for 
foreign luxuries, fashions and manners, with a restless, im- 
patient and unreasonable jealousy of our rulers, — are the 
causes of our present unhappiness ; to remove which we 
conceive no effectual remedy can be applied, unless as a 
people we tread back the steps that have led us to our 
present unhappy situation. 

The want of confidence in public promises requires that 
every exertion should be made, when promises are made by 
public bodies, that they should be held sacred and inviolable. 
To restore public and private virtue, those in higher stations 
(whose manners are readily copied by the lower classes of 
men) should set the example and all endeavor to revive and 
pi'actise that honesty and simplicity of manners that have 
hitherto been the characteristics of the inhabitants of this 
state. 

There is certainly need of economy and prudence in the 
expense of government, as far as consists with the preserva- 
tion of the same ; that every encouragement be given to our 
own manufactures, and that such further duties be laid on 
foreign luxuries as shall tend to stop their importation. And 
that our government may be preserved and resj^ected, it is 
necessary that the laws should be punctually executed. To 
provide some way of raising supplies for the public expenses, 
which shall be less burdensome on the landed interests, is an 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 237 

object we particularly recommend to you. And we espe- 
cially instruct you to oppose the emission of paper money. 
"When any matter of importance is to be transacted, respect- 
ing which the mind of your constituents is not known, you 
will have recourse to them for direction. At the close of 
the session, or at the end of the year, in order that your 
constituents may have the fullest information of the doings 
of the legislature, as well as the reasons therefor, that 3'ou 
be ready to satisfy them. And in every respect, that you 
make the Constitution of this Commonwealth your rule, and 
the happiness of this and the United States the end, in all 
measures adopted. 

By order of the Committee, 

Ephkaim Wood, Chairman. 
Concord, May 28, 1787. 

With the nation, and with the town no less, the period 
from 1783 to 1789, from the declaration of peace to the 
adoption of the Constitution, was a period of transi- 
tion. Amid great doubts and perils, our people were 
emerging from a position of vassalage as Colonies to 
an assured place as a great and free nation. It is a 
happy circumstance that the last full expression of 
the town upon public affairs should give us, as in a 
mirror, the true portrait of our people at that turning 
point of their history. Their ardent loyalty to the 
country for which they had sacrificed so much, their 
deep respect for law and Constitution, their admiration 
of the simple and as we are apt sometimes to think 
stern virtues of the fathers, their democratic contempt 
for luxury and ostentation, their unwillingness to 
gain even great public advantages except according to 
exact legal precedents, their disposition to hold public 
servants to a strict account, — all these qualities are 
clearly exhibited in this interesting document. And 



238 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

with it we close a period scarcely less important than 
that of the Eevolution itself. 



1 At first the Shays Rebellion was a tumultuous rising 
of exasperated people to get rid of heavy burdens. Then 
it was a more organized effort to prevent the punishment 
of those who had engaged in such risings. Finally, 
it became rebellion pure and simple. Leaders were 
chosen. Martial law was proclaimed in the camps. 
Travellers were stopped and searched, and those active 
for government held in custody. Shays sent a circular 
letter to the selectmen of the towns in Hampshire 
County, requesting them to hold the men of their 
respective towns ready to march at a moment's notice, 
armed and equipped, properly officered, and with sixty 
rounds of powder to a man. He even issued a procla- 
mation for the arrest of those who resisted his author- 
ity. Luke Day summoned the troops under General 
Shcpard at Springfield to lay down their arms, prom- 
ising that upon their so doing they should be permit- 
ted to return home on parol. This was war; and it 
needed only vigor and forces enough to make it bloody 
and fatal war. But, as often happens with our Saxon 
race, when the danger looked greatest it was least. At 
the outset, so many were miserably poor and suffering 
that they felt ready for anything, while the great mass 
of the people looked on supinely, if not sympathetically. 
But the troubles, the outrages, the drunken violence, 
the increasing confusion, of the last four months had 
sobered people. The great body ranged themselves on 

1 The latter part of a lecture on the Shays Rebellion, delivered 
before the Concord Lyceum, January 31, 1877, is added to the above 
paper. — Editor. 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 239 

the side of the law, and all but the desperate or crimi- 
nal deserted a sinking cause. The first plan of Shays 
was to gather his forces at Worcester and thence to 
march to Boston, and by force to release Shattuck and 
his compatriots. To this end twelve hundred actually 
gathered there in the month of December. But the 
attitude of the government and the bitter winter awed 
them. They retreated westward, so cast down, so 
thinly clad, so footsore, so hungry, that some of them 
dropped dead in their tracks ; and all along the way 
the doors of the friends of government, in pure human 
pity, were thrown open to receive the forlorn creatures. 
The story which is told of Dr. Bancroft, then the young 
minister of Worcester, sitting on his doorstep, the key 
of his house in his pocket and telling Shays, when he 
marched into town and in the conscious pride of power 
demanded entrance for his followers, that no rebel 
should pass through his doorway except over its owner's 
prostrate body, furnished a strange picture to have its 
original in the heart of law-abiding Massachusetts. 

All this time government had not been idle. A force 
of forty-four hundred men had been called out and 
placed under the command of that Revolutionary vet- 
eran. General Benjamin Lincoln. For this army the 
country towns furnished provisions, and a voluntary 
subscription of the merchants of Boston supplied the 
money necessary to equip it. With two thousand men, 
the levies from the Eastern counties. General Lincoln 
began his march on January 19th, 1787, and reached 
Worcester on the 22d. Here tidings came which 
filled him with alarm and hastened his steps. Shays, 
Day, and Parsons, the most resolute of the insurgents, 
had gathered two thousand men, half of them, report 
said, old Continental soldiers, and had marched to 



240 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

attack Springfield arsenal, then held by General 
Shepard with only nine hundred men. The assault 
■was actually attempted. General Shepard warned off 
the insurgents, then fired over their heads, then gave 
them a volley. Four fell dead, and the remainder 
scattered almost instantaneously. When General Lin- 
coln reached Springfield the next day, the danger was 
over. Shays Avith two thousand men took a strong 
position on two hills in Pelham. His home was here, 
as the doggerel song declares : — ■ 

" My name is Shays, in former days 
In Pelham I did dwell, sir, 
And I was forced to quit that place 
Because I did rebel, sir." 

There was for several days a correspondence going 
on, while the rebels secretly withdrew to Petersham. 
Then occurred the one remarkable event of the cam- 
paign. On the night of the 3d of February, Lincoln's 
army marched in a winter's storm from Iladlcy to 
Petersham. There was no track. A furious north 
wind whirled the snow and hail in clouds over the bare 
hills. Yet between seven in the evening and nine the 
next morning the troops made over thirty miles. A 
great achievement for veterans! Almost a miracle for 
green militia! The rebels were completely surprised. 
Some were abed, and escaped half naked. Some were 
cooking their breakfasts, and left their kettles hanging 
on the cranes over the fire. An old Middlesex sergeant 
used to tell, with great glee, that he himself ate Shays's 
breakfast, which that arch-rebel had left spread at his 
headquarters. Lincoln might, had he chosen, have 
made great slaughter. He did take one hundred and 
fifty prisoners. The rest did not stay their flight until 



CONCOED DUEING THE SHAYS EEBELLION. 241 

they found safety under the jurisdiction of neighboring 
States. The rebellion was over. 

The rebellion was over, but rapine took its place. 
From the security of neighboring States bands of men 
stole in, ready for anything which promised revenge or 
plunder. Petty larceny, burglary, arson, varied the 
life of the devoted citizens of Berkshire and Hampshire. 
The account of a score or more of acts of open or secret 
violence has been preserved. In the month of February 
five or six men entered the house of Nehemiah Kellogg 
of Egremont, knocked him down, half stripped him, 
insulted his sick mother, while he escaped by leaping 
from a window and running barefoot in the snow two 
or three miles to a guard of soldiers. In March, 
stores and barns in Egremont and Sheffield, belonging 
to friends of government, were set on fire. In June, a 
gentleman in Lanesboro woke up to find a band of men 
armed with muskets in his room, who beat his hired 
man, fired at his apprentice, robbed his house, and 
departed, threatening to return and do worse. A writer 
says : " The human mind grows melancholy, beholding 
the situation of these counties, so deplorable. Father 
against son, brother against brother, friend against 
friend. The whole country is in arms, and there is a 
cessation of all business." 

One plundering expedition rises almost to military 
dignity. A certain Captain Hamlin with one hundred 
and twenty-two men crossed the New York line. These 
marauders passed through Stockbridge, pillaging right 
and left. From one man they took military stores and 
a relic in the shape of a wampum belt received from a 
friendly Indian ; from a poor seamstress, a pair of silver 
buckles; from a store, liquors. Still advancing, bear- 
ing with them no little booty and some prisoners, they 

16 



242 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

came to Great Barrington, where similar scenes were 
enacted. At Great Barrington they required the 
jailer's wife to show them the jail, jokingly saying 
that they wished to see if it was strong enough to hold 
their prisoners. As the good lady, who seems to have 
heen of the Revolutionary type, carried them from cell 
to cell, she sung for their edification these appropriate 
words : — 

" Ye living men, come view the ground 
Where you must shortly lie." 

This prophecy, in respect to some of them, was ful- 
filled very shortly, as inside of five hours they were 
tenants of the cells which they had so jocosely exam- 
ined; for a hundred militia from Great Barrington 
and Sheffield collected under Colonel John Ashley, 
pursued the now retreating robbers, and overtook them 
in Egremont, within three miles of the New York line. 
A sharp skirmish ensued. Two of the militia fell. 
Four of the invaders were killed, thirty including their 
captain were wounded, and fifty captured, and the band 
broken up. Colonel John Ashley had that mingled 
persuasion and vigor which are at the root of all disci- 
pline, as the following anecdote shows. During the 
Shays Rebellion he was in command of a company, 
whose term of enlistment had expired. He called a 
parade, represented as eloquently as he could the need 
the State had of their services, and added that he did 
not want any cowards with him, and that he was going 
to see who were brave and who were cowards. He 
would give the word, " Shoulder arms ! " " Then let 
every brave man bring his musket to his shoulder, and 
let every coward slink back out of the ranks." Paus- 
ing a moment to see the effect of his eloquence, he drew 
his sword and added, with a strong oath, " But remem- 



CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 243 

ber that I '11 run the first man through the body who 
leaves the ranks. Attention, fellow soldiers, shoulder 
arms ! " Up went every musket, and there was not a 
break in the ranks. How equitable this was moralists 
must decide, but that it was thoroughly Jacksonian 
every careful reader of the campaign at New Orleans 
must admit. It was at this skirmish probably that he 
gave the order which tradition preserves ; when, having 
entreated his misguided opponents to return to their 
allegiance, and they had interpreted his leniency to be 
a symptom of fear, he called out, "Pour in your fire, 
my boys, and God have mercy on their souls ! 

By September, 1787, arrangements had been entered 
into with the neighboring States to repress marauders. 
Pillage had ceased. The military were withdrawn. 
After a year of as nearly utter anarchy as a civilized 
State can experience. Western Massachusetts rested. 
The greatest forbearance was exercised towards the 
offenders. All the rank and file, upon taking the oath 
of allegiance, were received back to citizenship. Six 
or seven of the leaders were sentenced to be hung, but 
after a few months' probation they too were pardoned. 
That this leniency was wise as well as merciful is 
clear. For almost at once these men, who had threat- 
ened the stability of government, sensible of their 
errors, settled down into orderly and industrious mem- 
bers of society, and nothing remained of the Shays 
Eebellion but its memory and its lessons. Of some 
things you cannot speak bitterly. The folly of the 
insurgents is palpable; their sin against the social 
state not less so. But folly and sin alike so had their 
root in the debt, in the misery, and in the disappointed 
hopes of overburdened men, that good people condemned 
with a strong sense of compassion, and gladly tempered 
justice with mercy. 



244 CONCORD DURING THE SHAYS REBELLION. 

One result may be fairly traced to these troubles ; 
and that wjjs the increasing desire for a stronger central 
government, which contributed to the acceptance of 
the Constitution of the United States. Said the Hon. 
Jonathan Smith of Lanesboro in the Massachusetts 
Convention for the ratification of the Constitution : " I 
have lived in a part of the country where I have known 
the worth of good government by the want of it. I am 
going to show you, my fellow farmers, what were the 
effects of anarchy. People took up ai-ms, and then, if 
you went to speak to them, you had the musket of 
death presented to your breast. They would rob you 
of your property, threaten to burn your homes, oblige 
you to be on your guard night and day. Alarms 
spread from town to town. Families were broken up. 
The tender mother would cry, ' 0, my son is among 
them ! ' Our distress was so great, that we should 
have been glad to snatch at anything that looked like a 
government for protection. Had any person that was 
able to protect us set up a standard, we should have all 
flocked to him, even if he had been a monarch. Now, 
Mr. President, when I saw this Constitution, I found 
that it was a cure for these disorders. It was just the 
thing we wanted. " Multitudes thought the same. And 
so, rejoicing in this great nationality which sectional 
jealousy and civil war have not been able to destroy, 
we can believe that to found it and to consolidate it 
was required, not only the bold prescience of Samuel 
Adams, and the wisdom of Franklin, Jefferson, and 
the rest, and the valor of Washington, Greene, and so 
many more, but, under God, the folly also of those who 
projected and the rashness of those who carried on the 
Shays Rebellion. 



MY MEMORIES OF CONCORD IN THE GREAT 
CIVIL WAR. 

March 17, 1886. 

MEMBERS of the Old Concord Post of the Grand 
Army of the Republic : — 

You well know that it was with unfeigned reluctance 
that I consented to address you, — that I, who had been 
a partaker neither in your perils nor your glory, — that 
I, who had only observed while you achieved, and sym- 
pathized when you suffered, — that I should undertake 
to say anything to you of that great controversy in which 
you were actors, seemed presumptuous indeed. 

I see that I was mistaken. You only ask me to 
speak of my memories of Concord in the Great Civil 
War. Other men will tell of experiences on the 
tented field. Other tongues will depict the courage 
and endurance, the sadness and the brightness, the 
many failures and the final successes, which make up 
the immortal story. My part is a humbler one ; — to 
recall the thoughts and feelings which filled all minds 
and hearts in one quiet New England town ; to report 
with what varied emotions we sent our brothers out in 
an ever lengthening procession ; to remember with what 
mingled anguish and exultation we received back our 
dead who had found it sweet to die for country; to 
narrate how our women prayed and worked, and worked 
and prayed again, if so be they might bring one added 



246 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

pang of the sick or dying in hospital. Yes ; my part 
is to try to make live again that wondrous four years' 
experience which held us all in its grasp, and gave a 
great gravity and a fresh moral dignity to mere living. 

But it is not an easy thing to do. In any complete- 
ness it is an impossible thing to do. The emotions 
which give greatness to such a time; the hopes, the 
fears, the anxieties, the relief; the consecration to a 
holy cause which counted no sacrifice too great; the 
courage which defied all danger; the faintness of heart 
in the presence of unexpected calamity ; the solemn tri- 
umph when tidings of a great victory came ; and that 
awful moment when the blood seemed to stand still in 
our veins, as across the wire was borne the doleful 
message that our good President had been basely slain, 
— these are not things which can be printed in books, 
or written on formal records of town or State. In 
their depth of meaning they are written only in the 
hearts that felt all the august greatness of the hour. 

I am looking back over twenty-one years of unbroken 
peace, — years which have made great events look un- 
real and shadowy like dreams, — years in which a whole 
generation has grown up, to whom Bull Run, the Seven 
Days' battle, Donelson, Missionary Ridge, Gettysburg, 
and that long siege of Richmond, are hardly as familiar 
as Thermopyla3 or Marathon or Ceesar's Gallic Wars, or 
Alexander's march across Asia. Forgive me if, in my 
retrospect of facts around which the mists of age are 
even now gathering, I sometimes err. Forgive me if, in 
recalling memories about which a hundred books might 
be written, my story seems fragmentary and rambling. 

Let me go back for a moment to events which pre- 
ceded by a few months the actual opening of the war. 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CR^L WAR. 247 

Twenty-seven years ago, in 1859, on the very ground now 
occupied by the Massachusetts Reformatory, was held 
what was called the great State encampment. Twenty- 
seven years ago ! More than half my audience either 
had not come into this troubled world, or were in the 
first years of innocent childhood. Owing to the sick- 
ness of Father Taylor, I was appointed Chaplain at 
headquarters. It had not been my fortune to come 
before into close contact with the militia of Massachu- 
setts. The whole thing impressed me greatly. The 
gathering of six thousand armed men, their exact 
mancEuvres, the reviews, the martial music empha- 
sized by the roar of cannon, all furnished me a fresh 
sensation. I was not alone in my feeling of interest. 
Tens of thousands of people from all parts of our own 
State and from neighboring States thronged to see the 
sight. Concord has rarely been more thoroughly alive 
than when those thousands tramped, in what seemed 
an interminable procession, from the muster field 
through our dusty streets to the site of Old North 
Bridge. I have often wondered whether the gift of 
prescience was granted to Governor Banks, so that in 
imagination he saw the forces already gathering for 
the mighty contest, and was seeking to prepare us to 
do our part. When we consider that he carried his 
plan into execution contrary to the advice of many, 
who feared lest disorder and riot should come in the 
train of such a gathering, we are inclined to think so. 
At any rate, that muster had a clear connection with 
the Civil War, and exercised a powerful influence upon 
it. It is hardly too much to say that the military zeal 
which it created and the well knit organization it 
fostered saved, not indeed the country from ruin, but 
Washington from the feet of foemen. It enabled 



248 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

Massachusetts in April, 1861, in the brief space of 
seven days, to send the first five regiments of well 
armed and well disciplined troops to the front. 

Fifteen months after this encampment the air was 
full of hostile threats, which many thought would 
prove to be but empty words. Then it was whispered 
about that Governor Andrew, with that large states- 
manship which knows when to transcend law to save 
the law, was without any legal enactment purchasing 
uniforms, and gathering arms and military equipments. 
Then too we were told, as a profound secret, that a 
messenger had been sent to our Concord Artillery to 
ascertain how many of its members stood ready to 
march at a moment's notice. These were the fore- 
gleams of that conflagration which was so soon to 
envelop the land. 

The 19th of April is the epoch day of Concord. 
April 19, 1689, Lieutenant John Heald led a Concord 
company to Boston to aid in the overthrow of Andros. 
Eighty-six years later, April 19, 1775, Major John But- 
trick gave that order which cut the bond that united this 
new realm to the mother country. Eighty-six other 
years rolled away. By one of those striking coinci- 
dences that so frequently appear in history, upon the 
anniversary of the very day and almost of the very 
hour, April 19, 1861, our company departed for the 
war. I find it impossible fitly to describe the scenes 
which took place at the time of that departure. From 
the moment that the tidings came that a shot had been 
fired at Fort Sumter, we, in common with the whole 
community, were in a state of feverish excitement. 
All usual occupations seemed tame. All duties for the 
hour gave place to the duty of the citizen and the 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 249 

patriot. "With the fall of Sumter the excitement deep- 
ened. Would our company be called out ? And if it 
were, how many of its members could and would go ? 
Natural questions these, and, no matter how sincere the 
love of country, in many a home dread questions. For 
these fifty-one soldiers were not liired substitutes. 
They were out of the heart of our homes, our sons, our 
brothers, our neighbors. I mention the first three 
names on the roll, Prescott, Derby, Buttrick. You see 
how essentially representative of Concord that company 
was. As soon as it was known that our men were to 
go, a subscription was started to care for them while 
in the field. In less than twenty-four hours, I think, 
almost we may say without an effort, five thousand 
dollars were secured. William Munroe, a name ever 
to be held in honor here, was sick in Boston and very 
feeble. When I called to see him he seemed to forget 
his weakness. He asked question after question, and 
when I dared not stay longer, he begged me to put his 
name down for a liberal sum. Sick or well, he would 
not, he said, have his name absent from that list. 
That was the spirit of our men. Nor were the tvomen 
in any respect behind them. With the call of the 
company, they organized what afterward became the 
Concord Soldiers' Aid Society, to supply any needed 
comforts to our men. In the first thirteen days in 
May they met six days, having often over one hundred 
present. Even the children did their part. It is 
recorded that Miss Dillingham's school sent sixty-four 
crash towels, and Miss Bean's sixty bags containing 
thread, pins, needles, and the like; while later I note 
gifts from every school in the town. We had several 
meetings in the Town Hall. The excitement was 
simply tremendous and overpowering. For men to 



250 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

meet was like coming in contact with jars charged to 
the full with electricity. How well I recall the march 
of our company at one o'clock on that April afternoon 
to the station. The old homely depot was crowded 
with men and women. We literally greeted the brave 
felloAvs with cheers and tears. I hardly know of which 
the most. One instinctively recalled those touching 
words of Ezra when the foundations of the second 
temple were laid : " Many . . . wept with a loud voice, 
and many shouted aloud for joy ; so that the people 
could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the 
noise of the weeping of the people. " 

We watched the cars until they disappeared behind 
Walden woods, then walked silently home, and the 
first chapter in Concord's Book of Memory of the Civil 
War was complete. A humorous little incident, I re- 
collect, relieved the tension somewhat, and at the same 
time showed how thoroughly the interest had pervaded 
the community. The next morning a little fellow, not 
over six or seven years, whose father was in the com- 
pany, walked up to the station, and with perfect serious- 
ness asked the station master to furnish him a ticket 
to Washington, as he was going to the war. So even 
the babes were patriotic. 

In July the company was back after the disastrous 
encounter of Bull Run, leaving four of its number in a 
rebel prison. As the soldiers, dusty and grim)^, with 
their uniforms torn and faded, marched wearily down 
the street to a bountiful repast and a loving reception 
at the Town Hall, the wide difference between play 
war and the real stern article was pretty clearly taught. 
In November of the same year there came a fresh stir 
in the town. Captain Prescott, whose tender heart 
shrunk from the sight of human suffering, had said 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 251 

after the carnage of Bull Run that he never could be- 
hold another battle. But he could not escape the sense 
of duty. Making his headquarters at our Town Hall 
he proceeded to enlist what became Company B in the 
32d Regiment, an organization in which there were 
forty Concord men. By November what was hot and 
feverish in feeling had pretty much passed away, and 
we with the rest of the North had settled down to a 
long, hard pull. So there was little excitement, but a 
great deal of interest. A general desire was felt to do 
all we could to promote enlistment and to increase 
comfort. The record of the Soldiers' Aid Society reads, 
"The ladies met several days in November and worked 
for Captain Prescott's company." One branch of in- 
dustry was probably for the first time pursued. I mean 
the knitting of mittens with one finger as well as a 
thumb. The company was to be stationed at Fort 
Warren for a time, and winter was at hand. So one 
hundred mittens were made and marked on the wrist 
with the initials of the owners. I know not why it is 
that, when the thoughts are most grave and serious, 
any amusing fact stamps itself so deeply on the mind. 
But, with a quarter of a century between, I recall 
nothing more clearly than the difficulty with which my 
good wife succeeded in placing the initials of John 
Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart Sherwin on 
the little circlet of the wrist of a seamed mitten. 

Essentially the same experiences were passed through 
when Company G of the 47th Regiment went, under the 
command of Captain Richard Barrett, to New Orleans. 
This was very largely a Concord company. I count 
on its rolls the names of Barrett, Buttrick, Wheeler, 
Ball, Heywood, Clark, Farrar, Hosmer, — names as 
old as the town itself, and which in all the two hun- 



252 CONCORD m the great civil war. 

dred and fifty years of our history have been apt to 
come to the front when danger has been near. In the 
list of the Massachusetts Volunteers appear more than 
one hundred and seventy Concord names which are not 
included in the three companies to which 1 have 
alluded. But they are scattered through so many regi- 
ments that I can only mention the fact and pass on. 

It must ever be a just cause of pride, that we did not 
to any extent resort to the purchase of substitutes to 
fill the quota of the town. Indeed, I am not sure that 
we resorted to it at all. The courage and patriotism 
of our young men saved us from that. But we had 
ample opportunity to see what the substitute business 
meant. One of the district drafting stations was at 
the Court House, now the Insurance Building. Thither 
came men, seeking for money, to take the place of 
those who had had the fortune to be drafted. One 
afternoon it was rumored that a body of New York 
roughs in the guise of laboring men had thus enlisted, 
and that, now they had obtained their money, an effort 
would be made during the night by their fellow roughs 
to release them. I remember that I asked Captain 
Moore how he knew they were roughs. "By their 
hands," was his reply. "They are dressed like honest 
mechanics, but their hands are as white and delicate as 
a lady's." At any rate our company was called out. 
The old agricultural building in which these precious 
recruits were housed was sedulously watched. During 
the night sundry whistlings and cat-calls, supposed to 
be signals, were heard. But nothing more happened. 
Early the next day the men were sent to Boston. The 
only tangible result was this. A man who sometimes 
did chores for me found hidden among the boards of 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 253 

Captain Barzillai Hudson's lumber-yard three or four 
suits of coarse clothes. The theory was, that they 
were put there to replace the regimentals in case any 
recruit escaped. They were never called for, and I 
suspect that the tailor's bill of the fortunate finder was 
for a year or two light. 

Before I dismiss this matter of enlistments, let me 
allude to a striking feature in the experience of our 
good town. I should say that we were constantly com- 
ing in contact with what we may call heredity of 
patriotism. Long words these. Translated into com- 
mon speech, they mean that the same love of country, 
the same devotion to freedom, and the same readiness 
to be sacrificed for a good cause which distinguished 
the fathers, were found in equal measure in the sons. 
The men who left a good lot in England, and for con- 
science' sake planted the wilderness, the men who 
fought at North Bridge, had worthy representatives in 
the great Civil War. The record is certainly a remark- 
able one. I have studied carefully the list of Concord 
volunteers. I have added thereto the names of such as 
my memory recalls, who enlisted from other places. 
Hardly one of the old patriotic families fails to be 
represented. Three certainly of the direct descendants 
of Colonel James Barrett, the Revolutionary com- 
mander, were in the war, two of them holding commis- 
sions. Adjutant Joseph Hosmer had unquestionably as 
many more. How many of the stock of Major John 
Buttrick entered the ranks, I dare not say. I can 
count up at least half a dozen. While Simon Willard, 
Dolor Davis, William Emerson, John Hoar, Thomas 
Flint, Nehemiah Hunt, Thomas Brown, John Ball, 
George Wheeler, John Melvin, Joseph Merriam, Robert 
Blood, George Hayward, and I know not how many 



254 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

more, had enrolled in our army men of their name 
and lineage. I hold that this is not of chance. The 
grand old history, the patriotic memories, somehow get 
into the blood. Amid what in us is selfish and limited 
they generate qualities akin to themselves. Heredity 
of martial spirit too seems to have marked those towns 
which were most closely connected with the first Revo- 
lutionary encounter. For, account for it as you will, 
this is simple fact, that more than twice as many men 
from Lexington, Acton, and Concord in proportion to 
numbers were promoted to be officers than from any other 
towns in Massachusetts. I do not think this either was 
of chance or favor. It was the direct result of constant 
and proud remembrance of the deeds of the fathers, — 
of what may be called a noble historic sense, feeding 
martial fire and patriotic purpose. Not in vain is 
honest town pride ! Not in vain are stately anniversa- 
ries! Not in vain do we pour into the attentive ears 
of the children the story of the virtue and the valor of 
their sires ! 

Many interesting recollections are connected with 
visits made by myself and others to the front. I begin 
with the earliest. Just before the first battle of Bull 
Run a party of our townspeople went from Concord to 
Washington. "What followed shows how unaware our 
people were of the gravity of the situation ; how little 
they dreamed of the long, heart-breaking conflict which 
was before them; and what a hold upon their minds 
had the theory of a thirty or sixty days', or at most a 
six months' war, which was to close this slight unpleas- 
antness. The cry, " On to Richmond ! " was the true 
child of this sanguine temper. When tidings came 
that a fight was imminent, large numbers, members of 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 255 

Congress, public officers, and others, started across 
Long Bridge over to Virginia to behold it; just as we 
might go over to Lowell to see the circus or to Framing- 
ham to the muster. Of course our people were not to 
be behind these in enterprise. . So three or four of 
them chartered a carryall and two smart horses, and, 
taking a Congressman for a passenger, set out. But 
alas ! when they drew near the scene of action, what 
met them was not victory but defeat. In all my read- 
ing or hearing I have received no such vivid account of 
what a defeat is as I gained from the lips of these 
gentlemen. The teamsters, who followed the army 
closely with supplies, first took fright, and turning 
their wagons around, and lashing furiously their mules 
or horses, fled helter-skelter towards Washington; 
meanwhile to lighten their load tossing out here a bag 
of coffee, or a chest of tea, and there a box of hard 
tack. The civilians could do no otherwise than follow 
them. But the narrow roads or wood-paths were now 
filled with the disjecta ynemhra of the Commissary 
Department. So they went bumpety bump, now up, 
now down, each step a hair-breadth escape until a ref- 
uge was reached. Then followed the soldiers, gaunt, 
weary, dusty, discouraged. So " On to Richmond ! " 
had come to a disastrous conclusion. 

It was just about a year later that Dr. Bartlett went 
to Harrison's Landing on the James. It was after 
what is variously termed the Seven Days' battle or 
retreat which began north of the Chickahominy and 
ended at Malvern Hill. The Doctor went to look after 
some of our sick men. The time had passed when 
people visited the camps for a sight. The war had 
taught us something. A few days before the Doctor 
started, I had a conversation with an English lady, 



256 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

who had been for several years a governess on one of 
the plantations on which our army was then encamped. 
"The soldiers have a terrible time before them," she 
said. "No white man dares to remain there in the 
summer months, the malaria is so fatal." So I was 
prepared to hear sad accounts. But to me, all unac- 
customed to the ravages of war, the Doctor's tale was 
sadder than my expectations. "As I came down to 
the landing," said he, "every available house, barn, or 
shed was filled with the sick and wounded. More than 
three thousand lay wrapped in their blankets awaiting 
transportation, — no roof over them but the stars, no 
couch beneath them but the damp earth. They lay so 
closely together that in the twilight I had to pick my 
way carefully and with difficulty lest I should tread 
upon these helpless folks." It was on this occasion 
that the Doctor brought home on a furlough Captain, 
afterward Colonel Prescott. So sick was he when he 
started that he had to be carried to the boat. The 
moment he got outside the James he began to recover, 
and a few days of clear Northern air completely restored 
him. Of this Harrison's Landing, Colonel Parker 
writes, " If there be on the face of the earth a place 
intended for breeding pestilence, the country about 
Harrison's and Westover was ordained to that use. 
For weeks one third of the command (then having only 
six companies) was on the sick list. . . . Not less than 
one hundred and fifty men, or one fourth, never returned 
to our colors." 

In the fall of 1864 I received an invitation from my 
friend and classmate, Mr. Knapp, who was at the head 
of the Washington department of the Sanitary Com- 
mission, to go to the front and examine their work. I 
have elsewhere given a full account of that intensely 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 257 

interesting trip, and shall here mention only two or 
three incidents. Let me illustrate by one scene how 
the love of home kept fast hold amid all these strange 
excitements. I was in Harewood Hospital near Wash- 
ington perhaps an hour and a half. In the middle of 
the floor was a young soldier. He had lost a leg in 
one of the battles, but had nearly recovered, and was 
hopping about on two crutches. He asked me if I 
knew anything about Boston. I told him that I had 
lived two thirds of my life in Boston or its vicinity. 
" Where ? " he asked. " On Fort Hill. " " Well, I too 
lived at the foot of Fort Hill. Did you ever go to the 
old Washington Grammar School ? " " Yes, five years. " 
"So did I." "Did you know this and that street, 
and this and that blind court and alley ? " " Certainly ; 
I have played coram and I spy in them all many times, 
and chalked with my own hands all the corners. " The 
moment he was satisfied I was a genuine article, he 
adopted me, followed me round as though I was one of 
the family, plied me with all sorts of questions, and 
evidently had an hour of pure delight, simply because 
I reminded him of home, and could recall the old 
familiar spots. 

As I went to the front, what struck me was the diffi- 
culty I experienced in getting within the lines, and the 
absolute freedom which I apparently had from all 
observation when once the magic barrier had been 
passed. When I went on board the transport, the sen- 
tinel saluted me, "Your pass, sir." When I left the 
boat, another sentinel repeated the salute, " Your pass, 
sir." Thrice going from City Point to the camp the 
old demand met me, "Your pass, sir." But once 
inside you went where you pleased. One evening I 
walked idly toward headquarters and saw General 

17 



258 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL VTAU. 

Grant sitting in the dusk under a tree, and actuated 
by curiosity approached within a stone's throw before I 
was stopped. Once more I saw General Grant. He 
was riding apparently to the front, — on a good horse, 
I am sure, for his staff were behind trying to keep up 
with him, and a good way behind too. 

On the way down in the government steamer I had 
abundant evidence what comfort soldiers get from an 
article which my soul hateth, I mean tobacco. The 
boat was full of men returning from a furlough or from 
hospitals. They had laid in a good stock of the weed, 
and before night the deck was in such a state that 
there was hardly a clean place on which to put your 
foot. I slept, I remember, on a settee with a chair for 
a pillow, and was not reminded of spring beds and 
feather pillows. On the return the case was different. 
The poor fellows wdio were going home on furlough 
evidently had exhausted their stock. The deck was as 
clean as a lady's parlor, that is comparatively. A 
Michigan lieutenant, observing that the night was cold, 
courteously offered me one of his blankets. I fell into 
conversation with him. He said he had been a British 
sergeant and fought at Alma and Inkermann. I said, 
" Then you have seen just as severe fighting before you 
came to America as since." "You are mistaken," he 
replied, "Alma and Inkermann were child's play com- 
pared with what we have seen since we crossed the 
Eappahannock. " I give the remark for what it is 
worth. 

The first thing which struck you as you advanced 
was the field hospitah A wonderful sight! A city of 
tents, arranged in perfect order, with streets and paths 
between, clean swept of all rubbish every day. Within 
were six thousand sick and wounded, six hundred of 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 259 

them colored men, carefully and neatly tended. It was 
Sunday. I do not think that the whites were, as the 
boy said, "overly devout." Very cheerful they cer- 
tainly were, and the convalescent, so far as the rules 
permitted, no little given to jokes and sky-larking. 
The blacks, on the contrary, were grave and subdued, 
such as could read poring over their Bibles. In the 
afternoon some two hundred of them crept from their 
tents and listened to a very earnest exhortation from a 
black sergeant, who murdered the King's English in a 
fearful manner, I was somewhat taken aback when in 
twenty minutes he suddenly stopped, turned to me, and 
said, "Brudders, I sha'n't no more expatiate on this 
matter, as we have a brudder minister from Boston who 
will speak to you. " 

One more scene. Monday morning, I think, I rode 
out to the advance stations of the Commission. On 
the way I met a sad procession, — a train of ambulances 
bringing in nearly one thousand wounded men from the 
disastrous fight at Eeam's Station. The road was 
rough, very rough, — so rough that I, though in a good 
express wagon, found on my return that the jolts which 
threw me against the forward seat had taken from 
each knee a piece of skin as large as an old-fashioned 
copper cent. In fact a road across the humps of a 
Virginia cornfield is a trifle worse than a corduroy. 
Your movements are at any rate more unexpected. 
These wounded men must have suffered inexpressibly. 
Yet not one groaned loud enough for me to hear across 
the intervening space of fifteen or twenty feet. To 
endure takes manhood perhaps more than to achieve. 

One is forced to recall two painful subjects, the 
return of prisoners of war, and the burial of the dead. 



260 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

When the men taken at Bull Run came back we made 
it a joyful occasion. They had suffered many hard- 
ships and deprivations. To insufficient exercise was 
added bad food. Young pig soup or stew as a steady 
diet is probably neither healthy nor nutritious. The 
constitution of one of them certainly was greatly under- 
mined. But they looked so much better than we feared, 
we were so glad to see them again, that we did not per- 
mit any clouds to darken our pleasure. But as the war 
went on the pain grew greater than the pleasure. You 
all recollect the poor fellow who came home a wreck 
from Andersonville, and whose bones rest in yonder 
quiet cemetery. (Charles Nealey.) When you asked 
him about his experience, he feebly answered, "Don't 
ask me any questions. I have suffered enough. Let 
me die in peace, forgetting all I can forget." And so 
in silence he faded away. How much these sufferings 
were of necessity, and how much of human passion and 
cruelty, we do not care now to ask. If we cannot for- 
get, let us try to forgive. Phil Dolan, Captain of the 
4th Massachusetts Cavalry, who had himself suffered 
much, w^ho told me that for many days his sole ration 
for the twenty-four hours was a square of corn-cake not 
more than half as big as your hand, and whose sickness 
and death date back to his imprisonment at Danville, 
always felt that in Virginia at any rate these priva- 
tions were, to a considerable degree, of necessity. He 
liked to tell of a venerable Southern minister, who 
used to bring them soup and such other comforts as his 
narrow means permitted. When they said anything 
about North and South, he would say, " Stop, boys, do 
not talk politics; I am a Southerner to the marrow of 
me, but you are my brothers, and I want to do all I 
can for you. Let me ! let me ! " 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 261 

My first soldier's funeral ! How well I recall it ! A 
stranger to me, a citizen of Maine, had sickened and 
died before he saw the foe, or could strike one blow for 
the cause to which he had given his life. (James S. 
Fernald.) A young woman, his wife, a boy of less 
than a year, a few sympathizing neighbors, a connec- 
tion or two, were with us as we laid him away in our 
quiet graveyard. Then other occasions came in rapid 
succession. There was one of our best young men who 
succumbed to the deadly malaria at Harrison's Land- 
ing. (William J. Damon.) Born to the possession of 
means, comforts, and luxuries, when asked why he did 
not hire a substitute, he replied in words which we 
should never forget, "How can we hope to save our 
country if no one enlists who has anything to lose ? " I 
think it was from the hotel we buried one who was in 
the South when the war broke out, and who with great 
risk and hardship stole through the rebel lines and 
enlisted in an Ohio regiment. (Charles H. Wright.) 
After Gettysburg there was brought home one who 
had an historic name. (Francis Buttrick.) He was 
scarcely more than a boy in years. When he enlisted 
in Captain Prescott's company we were all struck by his 
attractive face and his modest and unassuming manners. 
From the Trinitarian Church we buried two of three 
sons of one family who perished in the war. (Asa H., 
John H., and Samuel Melvin.) When Captain Bar- 
rett's company returned, a young man, justly dear to all 
the boys of the town, who had escaped all the perils 
of the foe and of the Louisiana marshes, was struck 
down by the perils of peace within a day's march of 
home. (Erastus H. Kingsbury.) But I cannot fur- 
ther specify. 

If I choose out the name of Colonel Prescott for a 



262 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

little more extended notice, it is not that I claim that 
his patriotism was any more pure, or his sacrifice more 
complete, than that of many another who sleeps in a 
nameless grave. I choose it because by character and 
position he is the fitting type of the patriotism and 
sacrifice of the town. It was a beautiful day in June, 
a slight haze giving softness to the air, the grass 
beneath our feet green as an emerald, the trees full of 
unspoiled foliage and blossoms, when yonder church 
was crowded in every part by those who wished to pay 
their meed of respect. As I looked on his manly form, 
a conversation I had with him three years before came 
back vividly to my mind. We were walking across 
that little sandy strip which is now our common. 
"You know," he said, "I hate war; a battle is dread- 
ful to me. Do you think it to be my duty to go back ? " 
I replied, " This is a question whose affirmative answer 
may cost you your life. I cannot advise you." He 
did go back. Quickly he was promoted to Lieutenant 
Colonel, Colonel, and finally Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. In the Wilderness he commanded a brigade. For 
weeks he ate, fought, and slept without change in the 
same clothing. Finally, after many dangers escaped, 
he fell gallantly leading his men in the first assault on 
Petersburg, June 18, 1864. "Have I done my duty?" 
was his dying word to his division general. "Always," 
was the reply. So duty carried him, as it carried 
many another, to scenes they loved not. And duty 
simply performed softened the last pangs and hallows 
the memory. 

You ask, perhaps, why recall painful scenes ? Be- 
cause, in the language of the ancient writer, "the 
memorial of virtue is immortal. " We have no right to 
permit the waters of oblivion to bury the names and 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 263 

memory of our dead heroes. It is our business to teach 
our children and their children that in this historic 
town there were men who emulated their sires. We 
are forgetting soon enough. We are permitting the 
pomp and pleasure of this world to remand the heroic 
and the self-sacrificing qualities into obscurity. To 
remember the days when men took their lives in their 
hands for duty's sake and their country's sake will do 
us no hurt. Perhaps none of you will sympathize with 
my feeling, but to me there was an august sadness in a 
soldier's funeral shared by few other occasions. The 
rest of us go when our time comes, when in the great 
Divine order our work is done. But in that war men 
left behind home, chosen employment, agreeable sur- 
roundings, all that makes life desirable, and died 
before their time, because they felt it to be their duty 
so to do. 1 cannot forget it. I do not wish to forget 
it. To my eyes the meanest life thus lost takes on 
some nobility. 

I turn to one aspect of our Great Civil War which is 
altogether fair and attractive. I mean the women's 
work. A whole generation of girls have grown up 
since those days. 1 wish that I could show to them 
how cheerful, how persistent, how laborious, the devo- 
tion of the mothers was. We have seen that almost 
immediately after the departure of our first company, 
a Concord Soldiers' Aid Society was organized to care 
for our men. This in the nature of the case was in its 
intent temporary and limited. But the record, Octo- 
ber 1, 1861, reads, "The Society was reorganized, and 
the same ofiicers were chosen /or the war.'''' From that 
time for the next three and a half years not a week 
passed in which there was not a large meeting for 



264 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

work. When there was a great demand two whole 
days were given up. On one occasion it is noted that 
four successive days were devoted to such employment. 
Not less than fifty or sixty, often over one hundred 
were present. Many women did as much work at 
home as in the hall. I have alluded to the interest 
felt by the children. In several of the schools the 
great reward of merit was permission in school hours 
to ravel lint. I have myself been in schools where 
half the pupils, boys as well as girls, were engaged at 
it, having won the privilege by good conduct and good 
lessons. The results were commensurate. Five thou- 
sand dollars were collected by the women and spent in 
materials for their work. Much more was given in 
cloth and goods. Forty thousand different articles 
were sent forward. Consider what that means. At 
most one hundred persons were in a position to work 
steadily. Perhaps one hundred was the highest average 
of those who did work. Then each one furnished not 
far from one hundred and twenty articles, great and 
small, every year. Each thing was carefully examined 
before it was sent, and then stamped with the name of 
the society. No slipshod work could pass muster. 

I am tempted to repeat in substance what I have said 
in my sketch of Concord about bandages. ^ Our women 
made bandages a specialty. All the good soft cotton 
cloth in the town was considered proper prey for them. 
In some homes, at the close of the war, a piece of cot- 
ton four years old a yard square would have been a real 
curiosity. On one or two occasions, enterprising 
women went into neighboring villages, where Soldiers' 
Aid Societies were not, on foraging expeditions, and 
came back with great baskets of spoil in ihe shape of 
1 Drake's History of Middlesex County, 1880. 



CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 265 

old sheets and pillow-cases. Twenty thousand ban- 
dages were made, and they were good ones, soft, 
strong, well rolled, each with three of the best pins in 
them. Twenty thousand ! Enough, if unrolled and 
placed in a continuous line, to go from Boston to 
Fitchburg. When I went up the James, in 1864, in a 
little government steamer, we stopped a moment by a 
great hospital ship, which towered far above us, and 
was just weighing anchor. I looked up. On the upper 
deck was a gentleman who saluted me, calling me by 
name. I recognized him. He was an old friend, the 
surgeon in charge of the wounded and sick on board. I 
think it could not have been three weeks before that he 
had written me a letter stating what a blessing a box of 
Concord bandages had been, replacing the cruelly stiff 
and harsh ones which the government had been able to 
furnish, and then mentioning with great commendation 
the fine sharp-pointed pins. I had a letter from Mr. 
Knapp of the Sanitary Commission at about the same 
time, in which he stated that the first bandages which 
reached Sheridan's army after his great victory at 
Opequan and Fisher's Hill were from Concord. One 
thousand wounds, he says, were dressed by them. The 
next morning the surgeons kept coming in saying, 
" Can you not give us some more Concords ? They 
are the best we ever laid hands on." This was a 
proper recompense for that decision, early made by the 
Society, and steadily adhered to, that nothing should 
go forward which the women would not be willing to 
send to their own husbands, brothers, or sons. I shall 
not attempt to enumerate the other articles which made 
up this great list. Time would fail me to do so. I 
want only to say one word about the general impression 
the meetings of this Society made on my own mind. I 



266 CONCORD IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 

hardly missed being present a few moments at any of 
them, — never, I am sure, when I was in town. They 
fascinated me. There was such a pervasive feeling of 
a really noble purpose, of work done for good and 
worthy ends, that you felt better by contact with them. 
Much hard and wearing labor was given. But I doubt 
whether you can find a woman who was a faithful 
member of the Concord Soldiers' Aid Society who does 
not look back with genuine satisfaction to the days and 
weeks given to its service. 

I was in a car bound to New York when a newsboy 
came through shouting, " Sheridan's great victory at 
Five Forks ! Richmond taken ! " Of course there was 
a great excitement. The tidings seemed too good to 
be true. But as their veracity became more and more 
clear, everybody congratulated everybody. The sun 
seemed to shine brighter and the horizon to grow 
wider. Then followed Lee's surrender. The war was 
over. A few days or weeks might elapse before all 
the scattered forces of the Confederacy should imitate 
the example of its central army. We had yet to pass 
through that Saturday, the blackest day in my memory, 
when we heard of the atrocious and meaningless mur- 
der of our great and good President. But the war 
was over. The great burdens would be lifted. The 
mighty strain might cease. Such of our sons and 
brothers as war and disease had spared might come 
home. 

As I look back upon those four years of irrepressible 
conflict, I cannot feel that they were an unmixed evil. 
They destroyed forever that one institution which per- 
petually put apart and kept apart the North and the 



CONCORD m THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. £67 

South. That of course. They knit us as never before 
into one strong nationality. Few will deny that. 
They demonstrated that a republic can, as it were by 
one stamp of the foot, summon out of the ground an 
army, and then by one wave of the hand send it back 
whence it came. So quickly our farmers' boys, our 
mechanics, our clerks and professional men, became 
accustomed to the panoply of war; and so silently the 
great array melted into the ranks of civil life, leaving 
but little trace of itself. All this we see and admit. 

But as memory carries me back to those days, I feel 
that in a higher than any material sense the war was 
not an unmixed evil. Great burdens had to be borne. 
Great gaps were made. Great sorrows were endured. 
But we were lifted out of ourselves. Mean and petty 
things were in abeyance. We felt our own pulse beat 
with the nation's pulse, and quicken or stagnate with 
its rising or falling fortunes. Yes, it was a great 
thing to live then. Life had the dignity which comes 
from consecration to large duties. 

The memories of Concord in the Great Civil War 
are not therefore all sorrowful. How can they be, 
when they tell of simple devotion to great principles, 
of beautiful love of native land, of power in men like 
unto ourselves to do, to dare, to suffer, and to die that 
the nation might live ? 

I thank the members of this Grand Army Post for the 
pleasure, sad and solemn often, and for the renewed in- 
spiration which has come to me, as at your bidding my 
mind has gone back through all the distractions of these 
later years, and communed with the mighty memories of 
a mighty past. 



A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 

Part of an Article printed in the Atlantic Monthly, 
February, 1865. 

FOR three years I had been a thorough believer in 
the United States Sanitary Commission. Read- 
ing carefully its publications, listening with tearful 
interest to the narrations of those who had been its 
immediate workers at the front, following in imagina- 
tion its campaigns of love and mercy, from Antietam 
to Gettysburg, from Belle Plain to City Point, and 
thence to the very smoke and carnage of the actual 
battlefield, I had come to cherish an unfeigned admira- 
tion for it and its work. For three years, too, I had 
been an earnest laborer at one of its outposts, striving 
with others ever to deepen the interest and increase 
the fidelity of the loyal men and women of a loyal New 
England town. I was prepared, then, both from my 
hearty respect for the charity and from my general 
conception of the nature and vastness of its operations, 
to welcome every opportunity to improve my knowledge 
of its plans and practical workings. I therefore gladly 
accepted the invitation which came to me to visit the 
headquarters of the Commission at Washington, and to 
examine for myself the character and amount of the 
benefits which it confers. 

The evening of August 23d found me, after a speedy 
and pleasant trip southward, safely ensconced in the 



A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 269 

sanctum of my good friend Mr. Knapp, the head of the 
Special Relief Department. Starting from that base of 
operations, I spent two crowded weeks in ceaseless 
inquiries. Every avenue of information was thrown 
wide open. Two days I wandered, but not aimlessly, 
from office to office, from storehouse to storehouse, from 
soldiers' home to soldiers' home, conversing with the 
men who have given themselves up unstintedly to 
this charity, examining the books of the Commission, 
gathering statistics, seeing, as it were, the hungry 
soldier fed and the naked soldier clothed, and the sick 
and wounded soldier cared for with a more than fra- 
ternal kindness. I visited the hospitals, and with my 
own hands distributed the Sanitary delicacies to the 
suffering men. Steaming down the Chesapeake and up 
the James, and along its homeless shores, I came to 
City Point; was a day and a night on board the Sani- 
tary barges, whence full streams of comfort are flowing 
with an unbroken current to all our diverging camps ; 
passed a tranquil, beautiful Sabbath in that city of the 
sick and wounded, whose white tents look down from 
the bluffs upon the turbid river; rode thirteen miles 
out almost to the Weldon Road, then in sharp contest 
between our Fifth Army Corps and the Rebels; from 
the hills which Baldy Smith stormed in June saw the 
spires of Petersburg ; went from tent to tent and from 
bedside to bedside in the field hospitals of the Fifth 
and Ninth Corps, where the luxuries prepared by will- 
ing hands at home were bringing life and strength to 
fevered lips and broken bodies. I came back with my 
courage reanimated, and with a more perfect faith in 
the ultimate triumph of the good cause. I came back 
with a heartier respect for our soldiers, whose patience 
in hardship and courage in danger are rivalled only by 



270 A FOETNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 

the heroism with which they bear the pains of sickness 
and wounds. I came back especially with the convic- 
tion that, no matter how much we had contributed to 
the Sanitary work, we had done only that which it was 
our duty to do, and that, so long as we could furnish 
shelter for our families, and food for our children, it 
was our plain obligation to give and to continue giving 
out of our riches or out of our poverty. 

Just now the Sanitary is seeking to enter into closer 
relations with the hospitals through the agency of 
regular visitors. The advantages of such a policy are 
manifest. The reports of the visitors will enable the 
directors to see more clearly the real wants of the 
sick ; and the frequent presence and inquiries of such 
visitors will tend to repress the undue appropriation of 
hospital stores by attendants. But the highest benefit 
will be the change and cheer it will introduce into the 
monotony of hospital life. If you are sick at home you 
are glad to have your neighbor step in and bring the 
healthy bracing air of outdoor life into the dimness 
and languor of your invalid existence. Much more 
does the sick soldier like it, for ennui, far more than 
pain, is his great burden. "When I was at Washington 
I accepted with great satisfaction an invitation to go 
with a Sanitary visitor on her round of duty. When 
we came to the hospital, I asked the ward-master if he 
would like to have me distribute among his patients 
the articles I had brought. He said that he should, 
for he thought it would do the poor fellows good to see 
me and receive the gifts from my own hands. The 
moment I entered there was a stir. Those who could 
hobble about stumped up to me to see what was going 
on ; some others sat up in bed full of alertness ; while 
the sickest greeted me with a languid smile. As I 



A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 271 

went from cot to cot, the politeness of la belle France, 
with which a little Frenchman in the corner touched 
the tassel of his variegated nightcap at me, and the 
untranslatable gutturals, full of honest satisfaction 
with which his German neighbor saluted me, and the 
" God bless your honor ! " which a cheery son of Old 
Erin showered down upon me, and the simple " Thank 
you, sir," which came up on all sides from our true- 
hearted New England boys, were alike refreshing to my 
soul. No doubt the single peach or two which with 
hearty good-will were given to them were as good as a 
feast ; and it may be that the little comforts which I 
left behind me, and which had been borne thither on 
the wings of this divine charity, perhaps from some 
village nestling among the rocky hills of New England, 
or from some hamlet basking in the sunlight on the 
broad prairies of the West, had magic power to bring to 
that place of suffering some breath of the atmosphere 
of home to cheer the sinking heart, or some fragrant 
memory of far-off home affection to make it better. I 
came away with the feeling that visits from sunny- 
hearted people, and gifts from friendly hands, must be 
a positive blessing to these sick and wounded people. 

Of course, the deepest throb of interest is given to 
the work at the front of battle. That is natural. It is 
work done on the very spots where the fortunes of our 
nation are being decided, — on the spots whither all 
eyes are turned, and towards which all our hopes and 
prayers go forth. It is work surrounded by every 
element of pathos and of tragic interest. The waver- 
ing fortunes of the fight, the heroic courage which sus- 
tains a doubtful conflict, the masterly skill that turns 
disaster into triumph, the awful carnage, the terrible 
suffering, the manly patience of the wounded, all com- 



272 A FORTNIGHT TVITII THE SANITARY. 

bine to fix the attention there and upon everything 
which is transacted there. The questions constantly 
asked, What is the Sanitary doing at the front ? What 
at City Point ? What at Winchester ? — are natural 
questions. Let me state first the general plan and 
method of what I may call a Sanitary campaign, and 
afterwards add what I saw with my own eyes at City 
Point and before Petersburg, and what 1 heard from 
those who had themselves been actors in the scenes 
which they described. 

When the army moves out from its encampment to 
the field of active warfare, two or three Sanitary wagons 
loaded with hospital stores of all sorts, and accompa- 
nied by a sufficient number of relief agents, move with 
each army corps. These are for the supply of present 
need, and for use during the march, or after such skir- 
mishes and fights as may occur before the Commis- 
sion can establish a new base. In this way some of 
the Commission agents have followed General Grant's 
army all the way from the Rapidun, through the Wil- 
derness, across the Mattapony, over the James, on to 
the very last advance towards the Southside Railroad, 
refilling their wagons with stores as opportunity has 
occurred. As soon now as the march commences and 
the campaign opens, preparations upon an extensive 
scale are made at Washington for the great probable 
demand. Steamers are chartered, loaded, and sent 
with a large force of relief agents to the vicinity of the 
probable battle-fields ; or, if the campaign is away from 
water communication, loaded wagons are held in readi- 
ness. The moment the locality of the struggle is 
determined, then under the orders of the Provost 
Marshal, an empty house is seized and made the Sani- 



A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 273 

taiy headquarters or general storehouse ; or else some 
canal barge is moored at the crazy Virginia wharf and 
used for the same purpose. This storehouse is kept 
constantly full from Washington, or else from- Balti- 
more and New York ; and the branch depots which are 
now established in each army corps are fed from it, 
while the hospitals in their turn make requisitions for 
all needful supplies on these branch depots. 

A few details need to be added. Where the distance 
from the battle-field to the base of supplies is great, 
what are called feeding stations are established every 
few miles, and here the wounded on foot or in ambu- 
lances can stop and take the refreshments or stimulants 
necessary to sustain them on their painful journey. 
At the steamboat landing the Commission has a lodge 
and agents, with crackers and beef tea, coffee and tea, 
ice-water and stimulants, ready to be administered to 
such as need. Relief agents go up on the boats to help 
care for the wounded ; and at Washington the same scene 
of active kindness is often enacted on their arrival as 
at their departure. This is the general plan of action 
everywhere, modified to suit circumstances, but always 
essentially the same. It will apply just as well West 
as East, only for the names Baltimore, Washington, 
and City Point, you must put Louisville, Nashville, 
and Chattanooga. 

When I was at City Point, the base of operations had 
been established there more than two months; and 
though there was much sickness, and the wounded 
were being brought in daily by hundreds from the pro- 
longed struggle for the Weldon Road, everything moved 
on with the regularity of clockwork. As you neared 
the landing, coming up the James, you saw, a little 
farther up the river, the red flag of the Sanitary Com- 

18 



274 A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 

mission floating over the three barges which were its 
office, its storehouse, and its distributing store for the 
whole Army of the Potomac. Climbing up the steep 
road to the top of the bluff, and advancing over the 
undulating plain a mile, you come to a city, — the city 
of hospitals. The white tents are arranged in lines of 
almost mathematical accuracy. The camp is inter- 
sected by roads broad and clean. Every corps, and 
every division of every corps, has its allotted square. 
Somewhere in these larger squares your eye will be 
sure to catch sight of the Sanitary flag, and beneath it 
a tent, where is the corps station. You enter, and you 
find within, if not as great an amount, at least as 
varied a supply of hospital stores as you would find 
anywhere, waiting for surgeons' orders. To a very 
great extent the extra diet for all the sick and wounded 
is furnished from these stores, and very largely the 
cooking of it is overseen by ladies connected with the 
Commission. In every corps there are from five to 
fifteen relief agents, whose duty it is to go through the 
wards once, twice, three times in each day, to see what 
the sick need for their comfort, to ascertain that they 
really get what is ordered, and in every way to alleviate 
suffering and to promote cheerfulness and health. 

I shall never forget a tour which I made with a relief 
agent through the wards for the blacks, both because it 
showed me what a watchful supervision a really faith- 
ful person can exercise, and because it gave such an 
opportunity to observe closely the conduct of these 
people. The demeanor of the colored patients is really 
beautiful, — so gentle, so polite, so grateful for the least 
kindness. And then the evidences of a desire for 
mental improvement and religious life which meet you 
everywhere are very touching. Go from bed to bed, 



A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 275 

and you see in their hands primers, spelling-books, and 
Bibles, and the poor worn sick creatures, the moment 
they feel one throb of returning health, striving to 
master their alphabet, or spell out their Bible. In the 
evening, or rather in the fading twilight, some two 
hundred of them crept from the wards, and seated 
themselves in a circle around a black exhorter. Re- 
ligion to them was a real thing; and so their worship 
had the beauty of sincerity, while I ought to add that it 
was not marked by that grotesque extravagance some- 
times attributed to it. One cannot but think better of 
the whole race after the experience of such a Sabbath. 
The only drawback to your satisfaction is that they die 
quicker and from less cause than the whites. They 
have not the same stubborn hopefulness and hilarity. 
Why indeed should they have? 

Speaking of the white soldiers, everybody who goes 
into their hospitals is happily disappointed, — you see 
so much order and cheerfulness, and so little evidence of 
pain and misery. The soldier is quite as much a hero 
in the hospital as on the battle-field. Give him any- 
thing to be cheerful about, and he will improve the 
opportunity. You see men who have lost an arm or a 
leg, or whose heads have been bruised almost out of 
likeness to humanity, as jolly as they can be over little 
comforts and pleasures which ordinary eyes can hardly 
see with a magnifying glass. So it happens that a 
camp of six thousand sick and wounded, which seems 
at a distance a concentration of human misery that you 
cannot bear to behold, when near does not look half so 
lugubrious as you expected; and you are tempted to 
accuse the sick men of having entered into a conspiracy 
to look unnaturally happy. 

If you go back now six or thirteen miles to the field 



276 A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 

hosjtitals you find nothing essentially different. The 
system and its practical workings are the same. But 
it is a perpetual astonishment to find that here, near to 
the banks of a river that has not a respectable \illage 
on its shores from Fortress Monroe to Richmond, — 
here, in a houseless and desolate land which can only 
be reached by roads which are intersected by gullies, 
which plunge into sloughs of despond, which lose 
themselves in the ridges of what were once corn-fields, 
or meander amid stumps of what so lately stood a 
forest, — that here you have every comfort for the 
sick. All needed articles of clothing, the shirts and 
drawers, the socks and slippers, — and all the delica- 
cies, too, the farinas, the jellies, the canned meats and 
fruits, the concentrated milk, the palatable drinks and 
stimulants, and even fresh fruit and vegetables. And 
in such profusion too. I asked the chief agent of the 
Commission in the Ninth Corps how many orders he 
filled in a day. " Look for yourself. " I took down the 
orders, and there they were, one hundred and twenty 
strong, some for little and some for much, some for a 
single article and some for a dozen articles. 

But it is not in camps of long standing that the 
wounded and sick suffer for want of care or lack of 
comforts. It is when the base is suddenly changed, 
when all order is broken up, when there are no tents 
at hand, when the stores are scattered, nobody knows 
where, after a great battle perhaps, and the wounded 
are pouring in upon you like a flood, and when it seems 
as if no human energy and no mortal capacity of trans- 
portation could supply the wants both of the well and 
of the sick, the almost insatiable demands of the battle- 
field and the equally unfathomable needs of the hos- 
pital, it is then that the misery comes, and it is then 



A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 277 

that the Commission does its grandest work. After 
the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania twenty- 
five thousand wounded were crowded into Fredericks- 
burg, where but ten thousand were expected. For a 
time supplies of all kinds seemed to be literally 
exhausted. There were no beds. There was not even 
straw. There were not surgeons enough nor attendants 
enough. There was" hardly a supply of food. Some 
found it difficult to get a drop of cold water. Poor, 
wounded men, who had wearily trudged from the 
battle-field and taken refuge in a deserted house, 
remained hours and a day without care, and without 
seeing the face of any but their wounded comrades. 
Then the Sanitary Commission sent its hundred and 
fifty agents to help the overburdened surgeons. Then 
every morning it despatched its steamer down the 
Potomac crowded with necessaries and comforts. Then 
with ceaseless industry its twenty wagons, groaning 
under their burden, went to and fro over the wretched 
road from Belle Plain to Fredericksburg. A credible 
witness says that for several days nearly all the ban- 
dages and a large proportion of the hospital supplies 
came from its treasury. No mind can discern and no 
tongue can declare what valuable lives it saved, and 
what sufferings it alleviated. Who shall say that 
Christian charity has not its triumphs proud as were 
ever won on battle-field ? If the Commission could 
boast only of its twenty-four hours at Antietam and 
Gettysburg, and its forty-eight hours at Fredericksburg, 
it would have earned the everlasting gratitude and 
praise of all true men. 

But, above and beyond all, there are great national 
and patriotic considerations which more than justify, 
yea, demand the existence of our war charities. Allow- 



278 A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 

ing that the outward comfort of the soldier might be 
accomplished just as well in some other way, — allow- 
ing that in a merely sanitary aspect the government 
could have done all that voluntary organizations have 
undertaken, and have done it as well as they or better 
than they, — even then we do not allow for a moment 
that what has been spent has been wasted. What is 
the Sanitary Commission, and what are kindred asso- 
ciations, but so many bonds of love and kindness to 
bind the soldier to his home, and to keep him always a 
loyal citizen in every hope and in every heart throb ? 
This is the influence which we can least of all afford to 
lose. He must have been blind who did not see at the 
outset of the war, that, beyond the immediate danger 
of the hour, there were other perils. We were trying 
the most tremendous experiment that was ever tried by 
any people. Out of the most peaceful of races we were 
creating a nation of soldiers. In a few months, where 
there seemed to be scarcely the elements of martial 
strength, we were organizing an army w^hich was to be 
at once gigantic and efficient. Who could calculate 
the effect of such a swift change ? The questions many 
a patriotic heart might have asked were these : When 
this wicked Rebellion is ended, — when these myriads 
of our brethren whose lives have been bound up in that 
wondrous collective life, the life of a great army, shall 
return to their quiet homes by the hills and streams of 
New England or on the rolling prairies of the West, 
will they be able to merge their life again in the 
simple life of the community out of which they came ? 
Will they find content at the plough, by the loom, in 
the workshop, in the tranquil labors of civil life ? Can 
they, in short, put off the harness of the soldier, and 
resume the robe of the citizen ? Many a one could 



A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 279 

have wished to say to every soldier, as he went forth 
to the war, " Remember that, if God spares your life, 
in a few months or a few years you will come back, 
not officers, not privates, but sons and husbands and 
brothers, for whom some home is waiting and some 
human heart throbbing. Never forget that your true 
home is not in that fort beside those frowning cannon, 
not on that tented field amid the glory and power of 
military array, but that it nestles beneath yonder hill, 
or stands out in sunshine on some fertile plain. 
Remember that you are a citizen yet, with every in- 
stinct, with every sympathy, with every interest, and 
with every duty of a citizen." 

Can we overestimate the influence of these associa- 
tions, of these Soldiers' Aid Societies, rising up in 
every city and village, in producing just such a state 
of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us, one of the 
people ? Five hundred thousand hearts following with 
deep interest his fortunes, — twice five hundred thou- 
sand hands laboring for his comfort, — millions of 
dollars freely lavished to relieve his sufferings, — mil- 
lions more of tokens of kindness and good will going 
forth, every one of them a message from the home to 
the camp ; — what is all this but weaving a strong net- 
work of alliance between civil and military life, between 
the citizen at home and the citizen soldier ? If our army 
is a remarkable body, more pure, more clement, more 
patriotic than other armies, — if our soldier is every- 
where and always a true-hearted citizen, — it is because 
the army and soldier have not been cast off from public 
sympathy, but cherished and bound to every free insti- 
tution and every peaceful association by golden cords of 
love. The good our Commissions have done in this 
respect cannot be exaggerated; it is incalculable. 



280 A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 

Nor should we forget the influence they have had on 
ourselves, — the reflex influence which they have been 
pouring back into the hearts of our people at home, to 
quicken their patriotism. We often say that the sons 
and brothers are what the mothers and sisters make 
them. Can you estimate the electric force which runs 
like an irresistible moral contagion from heart to heart 
in a community all of whose mothers and daughters 
are sparing that they may spend, and learning the 
value of liberty and country by laboring for them ? It 
does not seem possible, that, amid the diverse interests 
and selfish schemes of men, we ever could have sus- 
tained this war, and carried it to a successful issue, 
had it not been for the moral cement which these wide- 
spread philanthropic enterprises have supplied. Every 
man who has given liberally to support the Commission 
has become a missionary of patriotism. Every woman 
who has cut and made the garments, and rolled the 
bandages, and knit the socks, has become a missionary. 
And so the country has been full of missionaries, true- 
hearted and loyal, pleading, " Be patient, put up with 
inconveniences, suffer exactions, bear anything rather 
than sacrifice the nationality our fathers bequeathed to 
us. " And if our country is saved, it will be in no small 
degree because so many have been prompted by their 
benevolent activity to take a deep personal interest in 
the struggle and in the men who are carrying on the 
struggle. 

These national and patriotic influences are the 
crowning blessings which come in the train of the 
charities of the war, and they constitute one of their 
highest claims to our affection and respect. The unpa- 
triotic utterances which in these latter days so often 
pain our ears, the weariness of burdens which tempt so 



A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY. 281 

many to be ready to accept anything and to sacrifice 
anything to be rid of them, admonish us that we need 
another rebirth of patriotism; and they show us that 
we should cherish more and more everything which 
fosters noble and national sentiments. And when this 
war is over and the land is redeemed, and we come to 
ask what things have strengthened us to meet and over- 
come our common peril, may we not prophesy that high 
among the instrumentalities which have husbanded 
our strength and fed our patriotism, and knit more 
closely the distant parts of our land and its divided 
interests, will be placed the United States Sanitary 
Commission ? 



CHEVALIER BAYARD: 

A SAINT AND HERO OF THE IVHDDLE AGES. 

, Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum, 
January 10, 1894. 

WHEN your committee kindly asked me to lecture 
once more before the Concord Lyceum, I would 
gladly, bad time and strength permitted, have chosen 
some person, or some subject, connected with our noble 
town life. For I count it a duty, as it should be a 
pleasure, for every citizen, and even for those who are 
only citizens by adoption, to do what they can to make 
clear the process by which the tangled wilderness has 
been made the home of civilized life. For nothing does 
us more good than really to understand what our privi- 
leges have cost. So I should of preference have chosen 
some local topic, which would in itself have enlisted 
your interest. But it was impossible. 

I turn to what is possible, and ask your attention to 
a subject, to which heretofore I have given an imperfect 
treatment, A Saint and Hero of the Middle Ages ! 
Such is the title. In other words we speak of the life, 
the exploits, the pure and noble qualities, of one widely 
enough known by fame, little known in fact, Pierre du 
Tcrrail, commonly called " Bayard, the knight without 
fear and without reproach," — a man who, with all his 
ability, valor, and trustworthiness, was never called to 
a high command, but whose name survives when the 



CHEVALIER BAYAED. 283 

names of the nominally great commanders have sunk 
into merited oblivion. 

I am well aware that this career fell, as we might say, 
on the outer edge of the Middle Ages. Chronologically 
speaking, it might be more correct to say a saint and 
hero of the opening modern time. But Bayard was so 
essentially the result of influences and tendencies which 
then were waning, — in his breast the principles and 
vows of that chivalry, which in all other bosoms seemed 
to have fallen into shameful decay, were so vital, — that 
we must hold fast to the title " a saint and hero of the 
Middle Ages." He was as one born out of due time. 
He was like that last bright ray that darts across the 
horizon beneath which the sun itself has gone down. 

Let us pause a moment to sketch the dark background 
on which this bright career was cast. That is, let us 
seek to comprehend that general condition of thought 
and action, which makes this life wellnigh unique in 
its purity, its unselfishness, and its contempt of rapine 
and lawless violence. Note first the decay of chivalry, 
which was itself the glory of the Dark Ages, and one 
of the influences which kept society from falling asunder, 
and men from flying at one another's throats like wolves. 
At its heart what was chivalry ? Read the word of its 
latest historian : " It was the Christian form of the mili- 
tary profession. The knight was a Christian soldier." 
He entered the ranks through vigils and prayer. He was 
to serve God and the Church. He was to abide by the 
truth and keep his pledge. The weak must look to him 
for defence. The love of gold must not corrupt him. 
The Right and the Good must find in him a champion 
against Injustice and Evil. The theory perhaps was 
better than the practice. Still in that long period of 
darkness and bloodshed one of the few bright spots was 



284 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

tlie institution of chivalry. If you wish to read the story 
of true and false knighthood told as only the Northern 
Magician could tell it, take down your Ivanhoe, and com- 
pare Richard the Lion-hearted and the son of Cedric 
with the mean and crafty Prince John and the cruel 
and sensual Knight Templar. But when Bayard came 
on the stage the glamour and the good of chivalry 
had alike departed. There was temerity enough ; thirst 
enough for adventure and glory ; but little of conse- 
crated valor, little care for the weak and helpless, less 
devotion to the things which were true and just. This 
is the first point to be noted. 

Incessant warfare was another condition of the times. 
Green, in his History of the English People, calls the 
period from 1336 to 1431 the Hundred Years' War. Not, 
I suppose, that the conflict of arms was absolutely un- 
broken ; but that peace, when it came, was a hollow, 
precarious, and always brief truce, hardly a breathing 
spell between strife and strife. From 1504 to 1542 
France was in a state of almost continuous warfare; 
rarely with entire success, rarely with complete failure ; 
but all the time the sapping of her strength, the decrease 
of her prosperity, the debasement of her people, went on. 
By name the Tliirty Years' War in Germany is widely 
known. It involved in its fatal embrace half the so 
called civilized world. But who shall count up the 
almost innumerable battles which drenched with fra- 
ternal blood the fatherland ? Who shall enumerate the 
towns that were burned, the cities that were stormed 
and desolated, the citizens that were slain, the women 
that were dishonored ? A well informed writer tells us, 
that the crowd of lost women which followed an army 
were more in number than the soldiery, — that in a 
district, more than usually favored by distance from the 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 285 

principal seats of war, before the conflict began 1,733 
families dwelt peacefully in 1,716 houses, while after 
the war only 627 houses were left standing and but 316 
families to occupy them, — and that of flocks of many 
thousand sheep not one was left. " Two centuries 
later," he adds, " the losses thus suffered were scarcely 
recovered. In all ranks, life was meaner, poorer, and 
harder," while intellectual and moral decadence kept 
pace with the physical misery. 

The atrocity which marked warfare cannot be over- 
looked. The restraints which chivalry in its best days 
imposed on cruelty had passed away ; those of the 
modern code of war had not come into existence. The 
wealth, honor, life, of the conquered depended upon the 
stern will of prince or commander, or the mercy of a 
rude and passionate soldiery. 

In 1466, Philip the Good of Burgundy (I think the 
title must have been an ironical one) besieged Dinant, a 
flourishing town in the Low Countries. Its chief offence 
was, that a few of its rabble had insulted the Duchess by 
carrying about an effigy and using vile language. After 
a brief resistance the town surrendered at discretion. 
With a cool malignity the Good Duke took his revenge. 
Eight hundred of the citizens were tied back to back by 
twos and cast into the Meuse. All the rest of the males 
were sold into slavery. The women and children were 
driven out to live or die as it might happen. Every 
particle of personal property was seized. Then the 
town was set on fire and wholly consumed. Finally, 
contractors spent seven months demolishing walls, 
bridges, and towers. So at last the good duke carried 
out his threat. Men no longer said, " Dinant is," but 
" Dinant was." This was the mercy granted by the 
great. "What was the clemency of the soldiery ? Fifty 



286 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

years ago I read an account of the sack of Magdeburg, 
written by an eyewitness and sufferer. I have never 
seen the account since. But the dreadful picture hangs 
in the gallery of memory. Robbery, murder, rape, 
arson, were visited upon the hapless people. No form of 
cruelty or horror was spared. When the orgies ceased, 
thirty thousand of the slain strewed the streets of a city 
of which nothing remained but the blackened walls of 
its cathedral. One more instance. In 1527 the army 
of Constable Bourbon stormed Rome. No consideration 
for the sacredness of the place restrained the fierce sol- 
diery, most of whom were by birth and association 
Catholic. Every outrage which history records or the 
imagination can conceive was inflicted upon the high 
and the low alike. And all this went on, not for a few 
hours, but for weeks and months, with scarcely an 
abatement. Rome, says the historian, has been the 
prey of barbarian hosts of Huns, Goths, and Vandals, but 
from the hands of neither did she ever experience such 
cruelty as from the subjects of a bigoted Catholic mon- 
arch. These are terrible instances. We admit it. But 
they are only exhibitions of what in a lesser degree was 
the wellnigh universal ferocity. Even so wise and 
clement a prince as Gustavus Adolphus had to grant 
his army the privilege of sacking the towns it stormed. 
Such at any rate was one side of that martial experience 
with which every soldier had to come into contact. It 
was into a world in which such influences were universal 
and rampant that Bayard was ushered. Amid them 
he lived, and played his part, and if we are to accept 
the statement of his generation, unconquered and un- 
stained. By this contrast between the career and the 
environment we can better estimate the character and 
the high purpose which was behind the life men saw. 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 287 

Certainly, if he had any purity, any humanity, any un- 
selfish devotion, these qualities will shine with a clearer 
lustre upon such a dark background. Perhaps we are 
prepared now to study the life in its true perspective. 

Bayard was born in the province of Picardy at the 
beginning of the last quarter of the fifteentli century, in 
1475, month and day unknown. This place of his birth, 
we are told, had reared knights and nobles so heroic and 
virtuous, and so many, that they were called " the scarlet 
of the gentlemen of France." " For," says the chron- 
icler, " without disrespect to other nobles, they excelled 
all as the scarlet surpasses all other hues in brilliancy." 
Whether this be true or not, it certainly shows that local 
pride did not wait till the nineteenth century to be born. 

If you examine now the pedigree of Bayard, you will 
question whether in France or anywhere else could be 
found a family which had manifested so much loyalty 
at so great a cost. His grandfather with four greats 
prefixed died fighting for his Dauphine against the 
Duke of Savoy. His grandfather with three greats 
prefixed fell in the service of his prince on an un- 
known battle-field. His great-great-grandfather was 
with King John when he met the Black Prince at 
Poitiers, and with hundreds of the French nobility 
perished on that disastrous day. His great-grandfather 
met a similar fate at Agincourt, which closed with an 
English victory a campaign which every schoolboy in 
my day would remember by the words Shakespeare puts 
into the mouth of King Henry Fifth : — 

"In peace there 's nothing so becomes a man 
As modest stillness and humility, 
But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
Then imitate the action of the tiger," — 



288 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

a counsel which one ventures to think they were not 
slow to obey. The grandfather, faithful to the crown 
amid many who were faithless, met his fate at Mont- 
Ihery, sleeping on the bed of honor with six mortal 
wounds. The father was so sorely wounded at Guine- 
gate, the Battle of Spurs as it is sometimes called, that, 
though he lived many years after it, he was never able 
to leave his house. With such progenitors our hero 
could hardly help becoming the knight without fear, or 
sealing his loyalty to his country and king by occupying 
the post of honor and danger, and dying on his arms. 

The chronicle records that, a little time before his 
death. Bayard's father, " considering that by nature he 
could not make much longer sojourn in this mortal 
life," called into his presence his four boys, and asked 
them what they desired to be. The oldest wished " to 
stay at home and care for his father to the end of his 
days." The youngest two were ambitious of church 
preferment ; and in process of time became abbots. 
But there was one into whose breast the heroic memo- 
ries of his ancestors had sunk, and made him unfit for 
the quiet career of a country squire, or even tlie learned 
leisure which would be the lot of a faithful abbot. It 
was Bayard, then only thirteen years of age. " My 
lord and father, although by your paternal love I feel 
myself so greatly bound that I ought to be forgetful of 
all else, and serve but you till your life's end, neverthe- 
less the recital of the great and noble deeds that often- 
times you have told to us of noble knights in bygone 
times, even of some of our own house, has taken such 
root in my heart, that I will be, if it may please you, of 
the same estate in which you and your ancestors have 
been, and follow the pursuit of arms. For it is the one 
thine: in this world that I the most desire ; and I trust, 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 289 

by God's help, to bring you no dishonor." This answer 
touched the old warrior more than either of the others. 
No doubt it recalled his own warlike dreams. For it 
was with tears that he replied, " My child, may God 
give thee his grace. Thou bearest much resemblance 
in face and figure to thy grandfather, who was in his 
time one of the most accomplished knights in Christen- 
dom. I will forthwith endeavor to further thy desires." 
So he straightway sent a messenger to summon the 
Bishop of Grenoble, his wife's brother. The prelate 
came right speedily, and with certain neighboring gen- 
tlemen took counsel as to the fate of the boy. Finally 
it was decided the Bishop should take him away and 
put him as a page into the household of the Duke of 
Savoy. This, so far as we have any record, severed the 
connection of the boy with his ancestral home. The 
young eagle plumed his wings and left the nest to take 
alone his flight. I cannot refrain from quoting the last 
charge of his mother. It shows that in that home, half 
house, half castle, where to our eyes life might have 
been rough and rude, one good woman dwelt, who was 
full of womanly graces. She was in the tower of the 
castle, we are told, tenderly weeping. But when she 
learned that her son was already mounted and ready to 
depart she descended and spoke her last words : " My 
child, you are going into the service of a noble prince. 
As a mother can command her child, three things I 
entreat of thee. The first is, that thou shalt love and 
fear God's service. Each night and each morning rec- 
ommend thyself to Him, and He will assist thee. The 
second is, that you be gentle and courteous unto all men. 
Keep thyself from pride. Be humble and useful to all 
men. Be loyal in word and deed. Be a man of your 
word. Help poor widows and orphans, and God will 
19 



290 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

reward you. And thirdly, with the goods God gives 
unto thee, be charitable unto the poor and needy ; and 
believe me such charities, my child, will profit you 
much in body and in soul. I much think that your 
father and I will not live a long time. May God give 
us at least the happiness, whilst we still live, of always 
hearing good tidings of you." What mother a genera- 
tion ago, sending out her choicest to struggle in the 
Wilderness, or to die at Gettysburg, could add much to 
the counsel of this mother, living in what we are apt to 
think the Dark Ages of morals as well as intelligence ? 

It was a strange life into which the boy was intro- 
duced. But it was the life in those days of every young 
aspirant for knightly honors and martial fame. The 
family relinquished all control of their own. It was an 
apprenticeship, only more stern as the ways of war are 
sterner than those of peace. The very form of expres- 
sion by which the conveyance was made was significant. 
" This is my nephew," said the good Bishop. " He is of 
a goodly race. I come to make you a present of him." 
" It is a good present," is the reply. " I gladly receive 
it. God make a brave man of him." The transaction 
is concluded. For the time being the youth belongs to 
his feudal lord ; — to stay in the home castle, learning 
the art of war, or to go afield and to face every danger, 
just as his lord wills. In either case, the life of page or 
squire was no sinecure. The reverse. At every stage 
his martial training made the first demand. Every day 
he must run, jump, wrestle, cast the stone or heavy 
bar; — in short, practise such exercises as would make 
him both strong and supple ; able to bear heavy armor ; 
able to climb the steep embankment and scale the 
ruined wall ; fit to encounter in tournament or battle 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 291 

sturdy knights. But this was not all. This would only 
make him a strong churl. He was to be a knight. 
He must learn the use of arms, be able to mount his 
charger without stirrups, and keep his seat however the 
steed might rear or leap. Then at full gallop he must 
strike fairly the quintain, that is, the image of a man 
set at the right height on a post. For was he not in his 
lord's house to learn to fight skilfully and to endure 
manfully ? 

But this was but a fraction of his work. Practically 
he was valet, waiter, and groom. The clothing and 
arms of the knight he served were in his charge. In 
the morning he robed and armed his superior and at 
night disrobed him. At the table he stood and served, 
supplying the meat and the bread, the water and the 
wine. It was his business to wash and groom his lord's 
chargers, and especially to see that they were well fed 
and well shod. Should a visitor appear, who but the 
page should relieve him of his steed and take charge of 
his impediments ? So even in piping times of peace a 
page or squire did not have time hang heavy on his 
hands. In a well ordered military household, his 
labors extended from dewy morn till latest eve. 

Nor did war or the mimic battle of the tournament 
lessen his labors. He must stand near his lord to sup- 
ply a fresh lance should the first be broken in the rude 
encounter. Should his lord fight on foot, he must hold, 
ready to be mounted, the charger. Especially he must 
be at hand to receive the steeds and armor of the van- 
quished, from which a successful knight derived great 
revenues. Are not these things all written in Walter 
Scott's story of the gentle and joyous passage of arms 
of Ashby ? No doubt all these young people and most 
of their elders have read it. The more the pity if they 



292 CHEVALIER BAYAED. 

have not. And between fighting and fighting, was there 
not the shield, the breastplate, and the helmet, and the 
sword, the spear, and the battle-axe, to be kept free from 
spot or rust, and flashing like a mirror ? No light duty 
this for a boy between twelve and twenty. No wonder 
that those old knights were able, alike in the icy North 
and sultry Soutli, to bear their armor and the wear of 
perpetual conflict. No wonder either that at the end of 
his four years' apprenticeship our hero is described as 
being " lean and colorless." 

Bayard remained in the household of the Duke of 
Savoy but six months. His progress in all military ac- 
complishments and in all chivalric courtesy was such 
that it Avas determined that he ought to be transferred 
into the immediate service of the King. This is the way 
he is described by the Duke himself. " His page," says 
the chronicler, " was beloved of all ; and was of use in a 
marvellous degree to lords and ladies. Neither was there 
page nor squire that could compare Fith him. He wres- 
tled, jumped, threw the bar, and bestrode a horse as well 
as possible." All this of a boy not fourteen years old. 
So there was nothing to be done, but that the Duke 
should visit the Court, exhibit the surprising accom- 
plishments of his charge, and make a present of him to 
the monarch. All of which was carried out according 
to the programme ; and the page of a duke became the 
squire of a king. 

What progress Bayard made in his new service we can 
only judge by what happened at its close. At seventeen 
he was released from pupilage, and knighted. At this 
time a gentleman of Burgundy greatly skilled in arms 
appears on the scene. He hangs up his shield as a 
challenge to all comers. This lean and colorless vouth, 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 293 

knight, desires to accept the challenge. But how could 
he do it ? He has neither fitting horse nor armor ; and 
he has no money. He bethinks him of a rich uncle, an 
abbot. To him he goes. His reception is not encourag- 
ing. " Ho, master boastful," was tlie salutation. " From 
whence get you this temerity ? You have lived barely 
seventeen years. You are of an age still to be whipped ; 
and you show great conceit." But in the end he got 
his equipment. Perhaps for the Scripture reason, that 
his continual coming wearied the good abbot. The 
chronicle says he won the first honors. His apprentice- 
ship was ended, and his personal life began in great 
glory. The records of Bayard's early life are plentiful 
enough, but to what extent they are traditions rather 
than history it is impossible to determine. Still, 
through the mists of doubt you catch sight of the real 
man. This was a youth of great attractiveness. The 
sturdy principles of truth and honor were already 
planted in his breast. In body and mind alike he was 
precocious. A courage which nothing daunted both 
foresaw and produced success. 

He was now to step out upon the field of well ascer- 
tained history, if indeed there be any such. By the 
King's order he reported for service in the garrison of 
Aire, a fortified town of his native Picardy. It is an 
amusing illustration of his chivalrous tendencies, that 
the first thing he appears to have done in his new home 
was to proclaim a tournament in honor of a fair lady ; 
in which tournament he played his part manfully, or 
shall we say boyfully ? 

It is impossible to note all the events in Bayard's 
military life. That would be to write the war history 
of France for thirty years. We select a few to illustrate 



294 CHEViVLIER BAYARD. 

this side of his career. His first experience of actual 
warfare was in 1497. At the age of twenty-one, he 
accompanied King Charles in his expedition against 
Naples. This was the first of a series of campaigns, 
lasting through three reigns, which cost France much 
blood and treasure, won her little honor, and ended in 
shameful expulsion from Italy. With barely fifteen 
thousand men, the King defeated an army of forty 
thousand men. In this first battle Bayard displayed the 
same fiery courage and the same aptitude for war which 
marked his later years. Two horses were killed under 
him, but he defeated the opposing troop and captured 
its standard. For all of which he won from his King 
honorable notice and a purse of five hundred crowns. 

The story of his defence, single-handed, of a bridge, 
seems to be accepted as veritable history, but it looks 
like the ancient Roman myth. It runs thus. The 
French and Spanish armies were encamped on the op- 
posite sides of a deep and swift river, spanned by a nar- 
row bridge. Secretly the Spanish general planned to 
seize this bridge, pass over it, and so surprise and per- 
haps defeat the French forces. Only Bayard and his 
squire were awake and armed. The knight despatched 
his follower to hurry up reinforcements, while he, 
single-handed, defended the narrow pass, the chronicle 
says, " half an hour." Perhaps we may without disre- 
spect intimate that much less time would seem half an 
hour, when a dozen spears were thrust at his breast, and 
a dozen swords were making deadly passes. True or 
false, the story shows of what stuff they who knew him 
best thought the good knight was made. 

In 1515, King Francis at Marignan fought almost for 
his kingdom and his life. A great army of Swiss mer- 
cenaries, enraged that the monarch should take into his 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 295 

service a body of lansquenets, hurled themselves upon 
his lines with indescribable ferocity. The conflict be- 
gan at three o'clock in the afternoon, and was waged, 
with no certain result, by moonlight far into the night. 
It was renewed the next morning ; but the better distri- 
bution of the French troops secured them the victory. 
Around the camp-fires, the soldiers discussed the merits 
of their leaders ; but all voices united in the verdict 
that on this, as on every field of honor. Bayard was the 
hero. In that verdict the young monarch agreed ; and 
conferred on the knight without fear or reproach the 
almost unparalleled distinction of bestowing knighthood 
on his own king. 

In 1521, Charles the Fifth, unmindful of his solemn 
agreement, despatched a large army to surprise and con- 
quer the northeastern provinces of France. There was 
no preparation, and Mouzon fell with little or no resist- 
ance. Mezieres was a little farther inland. Its walls 
were weak, its defenders few and discouraged. It was 
proposed to burn the town and to lay waste the environs, 
that the enemy, who could not be resisted, might be 
starved out. Bayard protested. He would undertake 
the defence of the town himself. Then the soldiers 
said, " Better an army of sheep with a lion for a leader, 
than an army of lions with a sheep in command." But 
the good knight did not have to depend upon sheep. 
There was magic in his name. A thousand, including 
many of the noblest of the land, enlisted under the 
banner of a private gentleman. He was worthy of their 
trust. When reminded that the stores were scanty, 
with fine satire he answered, " Then we will eat our 
horses and our boots." With untiring activity he re- 
paired the broken walls, working with his own hands, 
seeming to fill every place with his ubiquitous presence. 



296 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

The enemy were tardy in their advance. Their leaders 
were at odds, and in three weeks retired, leaving Bayard 
master of the city and the French frontier safe. 

But the end was at hand. In 152-i the reign of 
Francis the Magnificent, which opened so bravely, was 
drawing toward a close hardly less than ignominious. 
The King had fallen into gross licentiousness. His 
mother's malice and greed had robbed his greatest com- 
mander, Constable Bourbon, of his estates, driven him 
into disloyalty, then into exile, and finally into the arms 
of her son's greatest enemy. Emperor Charles the Fifth. 
The vain and incompetent Bonnivet was appointed in 
Bourbon's place, but could not fill it. What he lacked 
in military ability he made up in mean jealousy of those 
who had it. Bayard was sent, as he believed, for his 
destruction, with an insignificant force, to occupy a place 
incapable of defence, in face of a powerful enemy, for 
the ostensible purpose of cutting off supplies from the 
beleaguered city. " Sire, the place is in an open plain ; I 
need half your army to do the work." But, like a good 
soldier, he went where he was ordered. Reinforcements 
were promised, but they never came. At last, amid great- 
est danger, he disentangled his command and reached 
the camp in safety, boldly accusing his commander of 
treachery. 

But the time had passed for considering private griev- 
ances. The army was in peril. The incompetency of 
the commander had left open no way of safety but that 
of retreat. Bonnivet, whose redeeming grace was per- 
sonal courage, took command of the rear guard, and 
retained it till a severe wound forced him to retire. "I 
conjure you," he said to Bayard, " for the sake of your 
own honor and the glory of the French name to defend, 
as you so well know how to do, the standard which I 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 297 

am compelled to intrust to yom- tried valor and fidelity." 
" I thank you, my lord, for the confidence which you 
express in my loyalty," replied the good knight. " Had 
you always done me the same honor, both my country 
and my sovereign might have profited by my exertions. 
In any case I will do my duty." Hardly had he assumed 
command, when he was struck by a stone hurled from 
an arquebuse which fractured his spine. He reeled in the 
saddle, exclaiming, " Jesus, my God, I am killed ! " and 
fell into the arms of his friends, who placed him with his 
back against a tree. " Be comforted," he said ; " it is 
the will of God. His will be done." Then, no priest be- 
ing near, he made a confession to a layman. Finally, he 
begged them to leave him, and not fall into the hands of 
the enemy. " Go, and pray for my soul." Friend and 
foe alike mourned. The Spanish general tenderly kissed 
the hand of the dying man. "I would rather," he ex- 
claimed, " have shed my own blood, or given the half of 
all I possess, than this had chanced." Bayard lingered 
a few moments, then murmured, "God and my country," 
and expired. " Alas, I have lost a great captain ! " 
exclaimed the King. The soldiers, when peril was near 
or honor to be won, would say, " Bayard should have 
been here ; but Bayard is in his grave." The body was 
laid in the family tomb at Dauphiny. " For the space 
of a month you would have said that the people of 
Dauphiny were expecting immediate ruin ; for they did 
naught save lament and weep ; and feasts, dances, ban- 
quets, and all other pastimes ceased. Alas! they were 
right indeed ; for a greater loss could not happen for 
the country, and every man soever was grieved to the 
heart thereby. Be assured that it touched right closely 
the poor gentlemen, gentlewomen, widows, and poor 
orphans to whom he secretly gave and distributed his 



298 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

goods. But with time all things pass away but the love 
of God. The good chevalier had feared and loved Him 
during his life ; after his death may his renown abide." 
With this touching eulogy the loyal servitor closes 
his account of the leader he had followed and loved, 
and whose memory he has done so much to preserve. I 
think that we shall have to concede the title hero. Not 
hero according to the highest Christian plan, not hero 
in that wide brotherhood which includes in its regard all 
races and all nations ; but hero according to the light of 
the time in which he lived. He who faced death every 
day for honor, and not for self or power, he who won 
from twice ten thousand brave men the distinction of 
" the knight without fear," must have had a courage of 
finer temper than comes to most. Whether we can add 
saint remains to be seen. 

We have hastily sketched what Bayard did, — how 
and with what honor he passed through that curious 
apprenticeship, by which the page became a knight, 
what record his life has left on the military annals of 
France, and what the soldier thought of his fellow soldier. 
It remains now to ask, not what he did, but what he 
was, — to go beneath outward acts and ascertain the real 
quality of the man. Was he a bravo fighting for the 
pure love of bloodshed ? Or did he play his part, as 
many a plumed knight before him had done, for the sake 
of the rich rewards of place and wealth which successful 
warfare brought ? Or was there infused into the dis- 
position of this man something more lofty, something 
more gentle and generous, which separated him from 
the common herd of mercenary fighters ? These are 
the questions we seek briefly to answer. They are the 
questions upon whose settlement depend Bayard's claim 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 299 

to the title of saint ; or, to use the language of his day, 
" the knight without reproach or spot." 

Bayard was the last of the true knights. He rep- 
resented the spirit and purpose of chivalry in its best 
estate. Chivalry was not instituted to put an end to 
war. With the spirit of men and nations, it was then 
impossible. Is it quite possible to-day ? Chivalry was 
instituted to put nobler elements into warfare, — to 
make Christian soldiers. Singular perversion of the 
title ! And chivalry was going down in the presence of 
the mightier forces of modern civilization. But before it 
set, it sent across the bloody fields one flash of intenscst 
glory. 

On one side of him Bayard was a knight. He was 
that in all externals. Knighthood flourished when the 
fate of the combat depended upon the prowess of the 
single man, upon the battle-axe of Richard the Lion- 
hearted. To be this decisive man the body must be 
strong, agile, and enduring. In his own person he must 
have, as the proverb reads, " onset of greyhound, de- 
fence of boar, flight of wolf," the knowledge of arms 
perfect, the apprehension of the senses quick and sure. 
Bayard had all these. Never did he find a single man 
who could cross swords with him successfully. The 
knight must be, too, a rare horseman, ready to mount 
without use of stirrups ; able to keep his seat, however 
vicious the steed ; skilled to guide his charger in curvet- 
tings and wheelings such as we should now look for in 
the circus. The boys, when they read again their 
Ivanhoe, will note how in the account of the tournament 
at Ashby, applause greeted the Disinherited Knight 
because he reined his horse backward with such skill 
down the long lists. Well, Bayard was born to witch 
the world with noble horsemanship. Thrice as a boy of 



300 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

less than fourteen he exhibited a dexterity almost 
miraculous. Tournaments also, run for honor's sake, 
were eminently characteristic of chivalry. Bayard did 
not outgrow his taste for these, and certainly never his 
capacity. The good knight therefore, on one side of 
him, kept undimmed the traditions of the elder time. 
Justice demands that we add that he had another side, 
open to the life which was dawning. He was a com- 
petent soldier as well as champion, — better far than 
most who commanded him. 

Turn now to the moral side of chivalry, as it was in 
its best days ; its side of sentiment. The true knight 
must be loyal to his country and his king. Bayard had 
little for which to thank his king. For great services 
he received small reward, and, fit to command, he lived 
and died in a subordinate position. In the light of this 
read his own words. Emperor Maximilian, then in 
alliance with France, said to the good Chevalier, " My 
lord of Bayard, I should willingly give a hundred thou- 
sand florins to have a dozen such as you." To which 
the Chevalier replied, "Sire, for your praises I most 
humbly thank you. Of one thing, rest assured, that, 
while my master remains your ally, you can have no 
more faithful follower than myself." Pope Julius 
desired to purchase his services, offering to make him 
Captain General of his forces. With the low tone of 
patriotism then prevalent, when boundaries were con- 
tinually unsettled, and you might rise in the morning a 
subject of the King of Spain and go to bed a subject of 
the King of France, as happened more than once in 
Milan, such a sale of services would not have been con- 
sidered peculiarly disgraceful. JMajor Dalgettys were 
roaming about by hundreds. The swords of half the 
Swiss confederacy were for sale to the highest bidder. 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 301 

Black companies and white companies were everywhere 
seeking employment. But Bayard was not of this sort. 
" Sire, I know of but two masters, the God in heaven 
and the King- of France on the earth." Even at the 
hour of death he could not overlook the desertion of one's 
standard. When Bourbon, who, if any could be justified 
in such a desertion, expressed his grief, writhing in pain 
the dying man said : " I thank you for your sympathy, 
but I desire no pity at your hands. I die like a true man, 
in the service of my King and my country. Save your 
pity for yourself, who are bearing arms against your 
faith, your sovereign, and your nation." And in a 
few moments expired, murmuring, — the ruling passion 
strong in death, — " God and my country ! " 

Chivalry said the true knight must not descend to 
rapine and violence with the conquered. But the habit 
of the age was the reverse. When a city was taken, 
every innocent burgher had to tremble for his property, 
his own life, and the honor of his family. Note, now, the 
language of the knight, who in this respect certainly 
was without reproach. When told that, if he did not 
take a poor man's money, somebody else would, he 
answers : " My lord, I do that which I ought. God has 
not set me in this world to live by pillage or rapine. 
And, moreover, this poor man can go and hide his 
money, and when the war shall have passed out of the 
country he will be able to help himself therewith, and 
will pray to God for me." Note his practice. His works 
and his faith were yoked together equally. When he 
retired from a town which he had occupied, he first paid 
the good man or woman at whose house he had lodged 
a proper recompense, then remained the last man, that 
no mean camp follower might linger to insult and 
plunder. 



302 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

A town in Naples revolted againt the King of France, 
who then held sway. At the entrance of the French 
general the frightened people flocked around him, hum- 
bly begging clemency, and bringing as a peace offering 
their poor store of silver, to the value of about 83,000. 
Their lives were granted. Then, looking round, the 
commander espied the good Chevalier. " Take these 
vessels," he said, "I present them to you for your 
kitchen." " My lord, I thank you humbly for your 
consideration ; but for God's sake I pray of you not to 
make me take into mine house that which has belonged 
to this wretched people." Then, taking the vessels, he 
presented them piece by piece to each one present, with- 
out retaining one. And he but twenty-two, with not 
ten crowns that he could call his own ! One saying of 
the good knight deserves to be written in letters of gold 
everywhere : " All empires, realms, and provinces, with- 
out justice, are forests full of brigands." 

If there was any duty which the fourteenth, fifteenth, 
and sixteenth centuries set at naught, it was that which 
says that the strong must care for the defenceless, the 
widows and children who have none to look to for aid. 
Every hamlet was at the mercy of the spoiler. Every 
city stormed witnessed a saturnalia. But this was the 
very rule which was at tlie foundation of chivalry. "We 
may say that it was the chief reason for its creation. It 
could not make wars to cease. It could strive to rob 
war of some of its needless horrors. Bayard in this 
respect was a true child of chivalry. This is the story 
which is told of the capture of Brescia. That unhappy 
town was taken, retaken, and taken again, the last time 
by the French. A scene ensued, not so awful as at 
Rome and Magdeburg, but terrible to the sufferers 
and disgraceful to the actors, — " full," as the historian 



CHEVALIER BAYARD. 803 

sajs, " of profligacies and enormities." Oar knight was 
severely wounded at the moment of the capture, and was 
borne on a door to the house of a wealthy inhabitant. 
Grievously wounded as he was, he ordered the door of 
the mansion to be bolted, and set two archers to guard 
it, that no unauthorized person should enter. The lady 
of the house fell on her knees and said, " The house and 
all that is in it is yours by the right of war. But save 
my life and honor, and the life and honor of my two 
daughters." " Madam, 1 know not that I shall be able 
to escape from the wound that I have, but so long as 
I live neither to you nor to your daughters shall any 
offence be done." So this one house dwelt in safety 
amid the surrounding revelry. When at the end of a 
month he was able to go, the grateful woman brought 
a box containing two thousand five hundred ducats as 
an offering. This with thanks he declined. Seeing 
that she was pained at his refusal, he said, " Summon 
your two daughters," who had given him much diversion 
in his weakness by singing and playing on the lute and 
spinet. The two damsels, who were fair to look on, 
quickly came. He bid them spread out their aprons 
and then poured a thousand ducats into each. " For my 
recompense, pray to God for me " Then, turning to the 
mother, he adds, " Madam, I will take these five hun- 
dred ducats for my own profit, to distribute them among 
the poor convents of ladies who have been plundered, 
and thereof I give you the charge, for you will under- 
stand better than any other where the need is." This 
unbounded generosity was a part of himself. He car- 
ried out to the full the precept of ancient chivalry : 
" Be generous, give largesse, despise parsimony." He 
might have been rich. Into the purse of so successful 
a soldier the ransom money of captured knights and 



804 CHEVALIER BAYARD. 

their equipments poured more than a hundred thousand 
crowns. But he gave it all to those poorer than he, 
and died having little more than the small patrimony 
which he received by inheritance. 

With this I close my insufficient account of one of the 
most brilliant and attractive figures which lights up the 
darkness and softens the harshness of the military 
annals of that period. The outlines of that life are an 
inalienable part of French history. But I am well aware 
that the anecdotes which fill up the outline are drawn 
from the report of one who calls himself " The Loyal 
Serviteur," and who was a soldier under Bayard, and 
served as his secretary. None but a really great and 
good man can be a hero to his valet. Nor could any 
commander inspire a humble dependant with such rev- 
erence, and lead him with no hope of reward to write 
with such childlike eloquence, unless his master had 
been a great and a good man too. Within this last 
thirty years many a saying and many a story have gath- 
ered around the memory of our martyr President, Abra- 
ham Lincoln, which may not be true to the letter, but 
so far as I know them they are true to the spirit. They 
let you into the real soul of the man. So these stories 
undoubtedly give you the genuine flavor of the life. 
"You can cheat one man, but you cannot cheat all 
men," is the French proverb. Especially you cannot 
cheat a whole generation. The chorus of praise, with- 
out one discordant sound, which comes down to us, 
cannot be disputed. Shall we not add our little note 
and say " the knight without fear and without re- 
proach," or translate it into modern phrase, and call 
him " a saint and hero of the Middle Ages " ? 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum, 
January 26, 1870. 

"A SHORT, sturdy, plainly dressed man, with keen 
't\ gray eyes, bullet head of crisp brown hair, 
wrinkled forehead, high cheek-bones, short square face, 
the temples broad, the lips thick but firm as granite. 
A coarse plebeian stamp of a man. Yet the whole 
figure and attitude are full of boundless determination, 
self-possession, and energy." 

Here is a portrait from a competent hand. The 
original was Francis Drake, mariner, buccaneer, world 
encompasser, vice admiral, in all capacities the pride of 
his countrymen, and feared and hated by Spaniards. 
To-day Francis Drake is scarcely more than a tradi- 
tional name ; and exploits which once startled all Eu- 
rope take their place almost side by side with mediasval 
legends. But Francis Drake was the most robust reality 
of the sixteenth century. A sailor wellnigh from his 
cradle, the ablest navigator of his generation, in temper 
audacious yet prudent, in counsel secret, in preparation 
patient, in execution swift and fiery, he was the type of 
a great bold sea captain. If his achievements to our 
modern eyes smack of piracy, not on that account was 
he less fitted to play his part manfully in a contest not 
by any means waged according to Grotius and Yattel. 

Glance for a moment at the nature and origin of that 
conflict in which Drake was so prominent an actor. In 



306 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

the last third of the sixteenth century war between Eng- 
land and Spain was inevitable. In that war the stake 
would be honor and naval supremacy; for England more 
yet, — national existence. Naturally enough, the prin- 
cipals hesitated to begin what might prove to be a death 
grapple. Their subjects had no such scruples. The 
world saw the strange sight of two nations, nominally 
at peace, cutting and thrusting at each other, capturing 
and robbing by sea and land, and reciprocating injuries 
with a persistent and mutual ill-will. 

The popular explanation of this state of things is 
religious animosity. Spain was papal and the bulwark 
of Rome. England was heretic and the perpetual pro- 
moter of heresy everywhere. That does not tell half 
the story. " A great many threads went into that woof." 
Religious difference ? Yes. Political difference just as 
much. Rivalry of race did its part. Ill concealed hatred 
of rulers, and the sting of private wrongs were not 
wanting. But perhaps, after all, the most potent cause 
was a commercial one. By right of discovery, Spain 
claimed the fairest provinces of the New "World. And 
she proposed to put up gates, and to bar the entrance 
against all intruders ; to make the Gulf of Mexico and 
the Pacific Ocean Spanish lakes, and Tropical America 
a Castilian park. " No Englishman," says Philip the 
Second in his instructions, " shall under any pretext 
have dealings with Spanish subjects, or enterprise trade 
or voyage to the West Indies." Nor was this prohibi- 
tion a dead letter. Confiscation of goods was the least 
punishment. Hopeless labor beneath the lash at the 
oars of galleys, until death came to deliver, was a more 
probable result. To rot in the dungeons of the Inqui- 
sition, to be broken on its rack, to burn at its stake, 
were all possible consequences. 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 307 

And to whom was this menace offered ? To the most 
maritime, the most adventurous race then on the globe ; 
to the dwellers on an island, all of whose shores were 
washed by stormy seas, scooped into harbors, and made 
ragged by innumerable firths and bays; to English- 
men, the descendants of those Northmen whose keels 
ploughed all waters, and whose incursions vexed all 
shores. Of course there were collisions. By fair means 
or foul these sturdy islanders would have their share 
of the good things of the new paradise. Seeing that 
Queen Elizabeth and subtle King Philip would not 
come to open war, private Englishmen took the matter 
into their hands, armed ships, fitted out expeditions, 
traded where they pleased, resisted violence and offered 
it too, made reprisals, captured ships, captured cities. 
This they did for twenty years. Observers may call 
this robbery, piracy, war, according to the broader or 
narrower aspect in which they view the events of the 
times. But clearly we are contemplating one of those 
periods, which come, alas ! too often, when human pas- 
sions, national antipathies, and conflicting interests .so 
entangle the relations of two people that nothing but 
the sharp edge of war can cut the knot. 

Let one illustration show how things worked. One 
fair summer's afternoon John Hawkins, Devon sailor, 
engaged in what was then counted the God-fearing 
business of slave-trading, dropped anchor in a little 
Spanish harbor in Central America. But not a colonist 
would buy a negro or furnish a pound of fresh fruits or 
provisions. And this, not because the colonists had any 
moral objections to slave-trading, — for nobody could be 
fonder of it, — but because tlie King had forbidden inter- 
course of all kinds with Englishmen. " Since you have 
given me such a supper," quoth honest John, " I will 



308 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

bring you as good a breakfast." Which breakfast con- 
sisted of a volley of ordnance, and three boats, with a 
cannon in the bow of each, " with balls in their noses 
and men armed accordingly," rowed landward by sailors 
armed to the teeth, to supervise peaceful traffic. This 
performance Sir John, with humorous gravity, termed 
opening up a new line of commerce. To such a pass 
had King Philip's principles of commercial monopoly 
brought the national relations. War then was inevi- 
table. But war with what prospects ? In 1571 Spain 
dominated the globe. Columbus had given her the New 
World, Fortune and the astute counsels of Charles the 
Fifth had made her the first land power in Europe. 
That very autumn, in the closing hours of a bright 
October day, five hundred war galleys and sixty thou- 
sand men struggled for victory in the Gulf of Lepanto. 
At twilight forty Turkish ships, all that was left of 
three hundred, fled, leaving Spain without a peer on 
the ocean. 

In 1571 England in the comparison was hardly a 
second rate power. Fifty years of civil war had drained 
her of her life blood. The early reigns of the Tudors 
had been weakened by a doubtful title, and disturbed by 
religious divisions. So when Queen Bess climbed to a 
tottering throne, and looked around, she saw what might 
well have daunted a heart less stout. Her treasury 
was empty. Her army had no existence. Her navy 
was a little collection of worn-out hulks. " Only one 
hundred and thirty-five vessels, public and private, in all 
England over a hundred tons," — such is the record. 
Only this with which to confront a power that had just 
arrayed two hundred and fifty great galleys against the 
Turks, and won. 

Twenty-five years passed. England had come off 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 309 

victor in this tremendous struggle. She had inflicted 
a wound upon her gigantic adversary from which he 
never recovered. Her freebooters had ravaged his colo- 
nies. Her navies had insulted his ports. The ships of 
his great Armada had been torn and battered by the 
violence of men and the blasts of heaven. The world 
woke up, and found that this island power had won 
the first encounter in the great tournament for naval 
supremacy, and put Spain out of the lists. 

The man who did more than a thousand common men 
to accomplish this result, the man whose life almost 
contains the history of English naval affairs at this 
period, was Francis Drake. He was born in Tavistock, 
County Devon, about the year 1542. One involuntarily 
stops to pay a tribute of admiration to this little County 
of Devon, which in the sixteenth century gave birth to 
more naval heroes than all the rest of England besides. 
This was the home of stout John Davis, earliest of Arc- 
tic voyagers, who was first to try the terrors of the icy 
North beyond the seventieth degree, while pressing up 
the Strait, familiar to every school boy, which bears his 
name. Here burly John Hawkins first saw the light. 
Controller of the navy for twenty years, he may be said 
to have created Queen Elizabeth's fleets. Amid its 
broken hills and within sight of its rocky shores Richard 
Grenville was trained up to serve God and the Queen. In 
his manhood with his single ship he fought fifty Spanish 
ships fifteen long hours, sinking three beside him, and 
yielding the combat only when he had received his mor- 
tal wound. From Devon it was that Humphrey Gilbert 
sailed out on that fatal voyage to Newfoundland, and 
found God as near him on the deck of his sinking shal- 
lop as on land. Sir Walter Raleigh, courtier, man of 



310 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

letters, soldier of fortune, colonizer, and in his old age 
victim on the scaffold of the malice of enemies, was a 
child of Devon. In this heroic county Drake was born. 
He was the son, as traditions hold, of a common sailor, 
and brought up by the side of that sea on which he was 
to win his laurels. The home of his infancy was a bat- 
tered old ship's liulk, stranded on the beach, the best 
shelter which his father's poverty could furnish to a 
great family. At twelve he was apprenticed as a cabin 
boy. At twenty he was his own master, and already a 
bold, self-reliant man and a consummate navigator. 

The first clear glimpse we have of Drake is in 1568. 
He is at St. Juan de Ulloa with John Hawkins, and in 
command of one of the smallest of five little ships, which 
make up his kinsman's fleet. A hollow truce has been 
concluded with the Spanish admiral, who with thirteen 
stout ships is anchored in the same harbor. Suddenly 
the truce is broken. Without a word of warning, from 
all sides, from the forts, from concealed batteries, from 
the Spanish fleet, a relentless volley is poured upon the 
English. Three of Hawkins's ships sink. Drake, with 
his accustomed good luck, escapes unharmed in a fourth. 
Hawkins is forced to put ashore from the crowded deck 
of his sole remaining ship one hundred men ; and with 
forty-two haggard, half starved sailors, the remnant of 
one hundred more, arrives at Mounts Bay, Cornwall. Of 
those who fell into Spanish hands, four were burnt at the 
stake, and sixty-one, having endured many stripes, were 
condemned to that living death, the oars of a war galley. 
Scarcely a half dozen out of seven score ever reached 
England. And if any one wishes to know what it was 
that stirred the heart of England with a desire of re- 
venge, and filled every sea with her desperate rovers, 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 311 

let him read the story of the sufferings of certain Eng- 
lish sailors in Spanish ports, as written by Miles Philips 
and John Hartop, mariners. 

The most noteworthy result of this treacherous attack 
was, that Drake, ruined in purse and unable to get legal 
redress, swore a mighty oath that " he would get his pay 
and more out of the subjects of the King of Spain." He 
kept his word. But he proceeded to execute his auda- 
cious plans with his characteristic prudence. Had his 
purposes been purely peaceful and mercantile, he could not 
have proceeded more coolly. In 1570 and 1571 he made 
what he terms voyages of observation to the Caribbean Sea 
and the adjacent Gulf of Mexico. He wished to have a 
clear knowledge of those waters, of the nature of the Span- 
ish harbors, of the situation of the treasure stations, of the 
amount of forces guarding them, and to establish con- 
venient retreats and depots for his own use in the future. 

Then he proceeded to business, and in 1573 fitted out 
his grand expedition against the West Indies. It con- 
sisted of just two ships, one of fifty tons and the other 
of twenty tons. Hardly fair-sized yachts for sunny 
weather. The crews all told were seventy-three men 
and boys. That was all. If anything can heighten our 
sense of the personal resources and dauntless determina- 
tion of the men of that generation, it is a consideration 
of the means with which they accomplished great re- 
sults. Martin Frobisher made one of the first genuine 
Arctic expeditions on record. And he made it " in a 
ship of five hundred tons " ? No, in a little craft of just 
twenty-five tons. With this he discovered and explored 
the straits which ever since have borne his name. John 
Davis pushed his way through the ice fields of Davis's 
Straits far up Baffin's Bay, two hundred and fifty miles 



312 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

beyond where civilized man had been. And this in 
what he dignifies by the title of the " Bark Sunshine," of 
fifty tons. Humphrey Gilbert sailed the stormy Atlan- 
tic, and met his fate, in a shaky little sail-boat of ten 
tons. 

With his armament such as it was Drake reached his 
rendezvous in the West Indies in the summer of 1573. 
With a force of fifty men he surprised the treasure 
station of Nombre de Dios ; fought his way to the very 
door of the treasury of silver, where ten million dollars' 
worth of silver bars met his gaze, and then and there 
would have won this splendid prize had not a profuse 
hemorrhage from a random shot forced him to retire 
just on the verge of entire success. He was not dis- 
couraged. With the help of Cimeroon Indians, he laid 
an ambush for the great mule treasure train as it wound 
its way over the mountains and through the gorges be- 
tween Panama and Nombre de Dios. A drunken sailor, 
stumbling forward in a white shirt a moment too soon 
gave the alarm, and again liis prey escaped just as he 
was grasping it. Finally he took, in the woods near 
Nombre de Dios, a small train with thirty thousand 
pounds of silver. For fourteen long months he re- 
mained in the enemy's waters, took and destroyed sev- 
eral ships, some of them fourfold the size of his own, 
drove many smaller ones ashore, insulted the towns, 
broke up the treasure trains, and became the terror of 
the whole region. Then when he had wrought his will, 
he made a quick and prosperous voyage home, carrying 
thither £60,000. 

" A pretty brisk and venturous war this," you say. 
My friend, there was no war at all. The virgin Queen 
and his Serene Majesty were in profound peace. This 
was — what shall we call it? — a little sharp and un- 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 313 

authorized skirmishing between advance sentinels ; and 
Francis Drake was a sort of self-constituted picket guard, 
serving without commission, pay, or rations, and doing 
a little private campaigning on his own account. Or, 
to speak seriously, this was one of those incidents which 
marked how swiftly two great peoples, rivals in religion, 
rivals in commerce, jealous, angry, goaded by the mem- 
ory of mutual insults and wrongs, were hurrying on 
to an irrepressible and deadly conflict. 

While on the Isthmus, a Cimeroon chief conducted 
Drake to the top of a high hill, and up a lofty tree on 
which steps had been cut, and showed him the Pacific 
ocean. With that strange mixture of piety and piracy 
so characteristic of the men of the times, Drake fell on 
his knees and " thanked God for the sight, and prayed 
God to give him grace to sail that ocean." For what 
devout purpose we shall soon see. " And thereunto 
he bound himself with a vow. And from that time 
forward his mind was pricked continually day and night 
to perform that vow," Tlie difficulties were vast. 
Merely to contemplate traversing, in the high-sterned 
unseaworthy crafts of the period, fifteen thousand miles, 
over all seas, through all climates, required incredible 
courage. Then beyond the Equator literally it was 
unknown water. No Englishmen had ever sailed over 
it. What dangers there might be, what stormy circles, 
what fatal currents, what hidden reefs, nobody knew. 
And should he reach his goal, he was alone, far away 
from all friendly aid, in a hostile sea. Nor was this all. 
The medical skill of that day did not make it possible 
for sailors to be confined on shipboard during such a 
prolonged voyage, and live. To land, and more than 
once, whether to confront friends or foes, was an impera- 



814 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

tive necessity. Consider too what a width of knowledge, 
covering all possible human wants, was needful. This 
little ship, bound on a voyage for three whole years, 
must be a world to itself. Sir Richard Hawkins's ac- 
count of the ship stores of a similar expedition runs 
thus ; " I was victualled completely for eighteen months. 
But whether the baker, brewer, and butcher, and others, 
were masters of their art, I know not. This I am sure 
of, I had excellent fat beef, strong beer, good wlieaten 
bread, good Iceland ling, butter and cheese of the best, 
admirable sack and aqua-vitae, pease, oatmeal, wheat- 
meal, oyle, spices, sugar, fruit, and rice ; with chyrurgerie 
as syrups, julips, condits, trechisses, antidotes, balsams, 
gums, ungvents, implaisters, oyles, potions, suppositers, 
and purging pills. My carpenter was fitted from the 
thickest bolt to the pump nail or tacket. The boatswain 
from cable to sail twine. The steward and the cook 
from the caldron to the spoone." But enough. If now 
the elegances of life are added, and if one insists that 
for ornament and use there must be expert musicians, 
and rich furniture, — " all the vessels for the table," 
as it is recorded, " yea, many belonging even to the 
cooke roome being of solid silver," — one comprehends 
that the burdens of a great captain were heavy, even 
before he lifted an anchor or loosed a sail. 

But whatever the dangers, Drake dared them, and 
whatever the cares, he bore them. For on the 13th of 
December, 1577, his little fleet slipped from its moor- 
ings and dropped down Plymouth Bay into the English 
Channel. As usual, the equipment seemed ludicrously 
insufficient. Drake's own ship, the " Pelican," afterwards 
christened the " Golden Hind," was a vessel of a hundred 
tons. Four smaller ships made up the whole tonnage 
to two hundred and seventy-five tons, — less than one 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 315 

half that of a coal schooner from Philadelphia. One 
hundred and sixty-four men and boys made up the 
crew. In thirteen days, Drake was at Mogadore. Six 
months brought him to Port St. Julian, on the eastern 
side of Patagonia, where he tarried two months to refit 
his ships and refresh his men. 

The 1st of November, 1578, found Drake, with one soli- 
tary ship, the " Golden Hind," backed by a scanty crew 
of forty-five, on the bosom of the broad Pacific. One 
month before the " Marigold " parted from him in a storm, 
whether to go down beneath the billows of the Southern 
Sea, or to be ground to pieces on the jagged rocks of 
Terra del Fuego, no man knows. Captain Winter in 
the "Elizabeth," against the will of his men, steered 
Westward, leaving his commander to his fate, — a deed 
never forgiven by the sturdy seamen of England. 

All the annals of maritime adventure cannot produce 
another chapter so remarkable as that furnished by 
the " Golden Hind " in the next six months. Here was 
a private vessel, of a nation nominally at peace with 
Spain. Yet week after week she sails along the coast, 
plundering, not like pirates, hastily and fearfully as with 
a bad conscience, but coolly and methodically, as per- 
forming legitimate and praiseworthy work. You go on 
board the ship. No coarse and profane language strikes 
your ears. Twice a day, at morn and eve, "at call of 
bell, all repair to hear public prayers in a godly and 
devout manner, as good Christians ought." You might 
think yourself on board a missionary ship. But the 
work of plunder goes on all the same. The record of 
the day's doings has a business-like simplicity, and is 
often enlivened by a touch of humor. Thus : " We met 
a Spaniard with an Indian boy driving eight lambs or 
Peruvian sheep. Each sheep bare two leathern bags, 



316 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

and in each bag was 50 lbs. weight of refined silver. 
We could not incline to see a gentleman Spaniard turned 
courier. Therefore, without entreaty, we offered our 
services and became drovers, — only that his direc- 
tions were not so perfect that we could keep in the way 
he intended. For almost as soon as he was parted from 
us, we with our new kind of carriages were come into our 
boats." Here is another entry : " We stopped at a town 
to refresh ; not forgetting before we got on shipboard 
to take with us a certain pot of about a bushel in bigness 
full of ryals, of plate, together with a chain of gold and 
some other jewels, which we entreated a gentleman 
Spaniard to leave behind as he was flying out of town." 
That is gamesome enough. 

The most profitable and jolly buccaneering must come 
to an end. So when Drake had fallen in with the great 
galleon " Cacafuego " and rifled her, he found that what 
with gold and what with provision his little " Pelican " 
was full. What should he do ? Whither should he turn ? 
If he sailed Southward, back over his track, there were 
probably Spanish galleys waiting to intercept him. He 
even considered the audacious plan of making straight 
for the North, turning Behring Strait, and seeking amid 
polar ice-fields a homeward passage. Fortunately his 
men protested. Then he turned Westward, steering for 
the Cape of Good Hope, and with few incidents reached 
England the 26th day of September, 1580, having been 
absent nearly three years, and circumnavigated the globe. 

Drake came home successful beyond all rational ex- 
pectations. The amount of his treasure has never been 
definitely stated. Probably it was not less than four 
hundred thousand dollars. The vast stores of diamonds, 
pearls, and other precious stones must have increased 
greatly the grand sum total. Legal people, and jealous 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 317 

people, and we may well believe some honest people, 
called Drake's achievements pure thieving and piracy. 
Queen Elizabeth did not know what to say. She was 
not ready to approve openly what she secretly permitted, 
if not counselled, and the results of which she probably 
shared. For she did not wish to precipitate war. She 
did not condemn. For it was not in her heart to let so 
much good specie go out of her dominions. So she 
waited. But the masses were not to be restrained by 
any dictates of cold prudence. They believed that 
Drake was fighting audaciously and successfully, if not 
legally, an inevitable battle. He was their hero. They 
followed him with open-mouthed exultation. The Queen 
came to their opinion ; or at least made up her mind 
that war could not be escaped. After five months' 
delay, she dined with her bold sailor at Deptford on 
board the " Golden Hind," and then conferred upon him 
knighthood. 

Here ends the first chapter. Adieu now to wild ven- 
tures and patriotic piracy. The dashing, somewhat 
questionable, but always successful guerilla warfare, 
quite proper for Francis Drake, late cabin boy, bold 
Plymouth mariner, and unknown adventurer, would be 
quite improper for Sir Francis Drake, man of substance, 
honorable knight and Queen's officer. Henceforth his 
course, if not less adventurous, must go through the 
channels of regular, legal, and commissioned warfare. 
So he paused. But he could not be an idler. On land 
or sea he must be busy. One year he was Mayor of 
Plymouth. Four months of a winter he acted as an 
engineer, conducting with a skill beyond his time, and 
largely at his own expense, fresh water from the hills, 
nine miles away, to the almost waterless town over 



318 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

which he presided. Twice he served in Parliament. 
With Sir John Hawkins he established a naval charity 
ealled " The Chest of Chatham." So this was not simply 
a fanatic fighter of Spaniards, or a rapacious bucca- 
neer, but a man of well rounded common sense, full of 
capacity for all stations. 

For five years Drake kept quiet, — no doubt by the 
Queen's command. Glad she might be to see Spain 
weakened, but not ready to face the perils of open war. 
At the end of that period, with a decision by no means 
characteristic of her, she took a step forward and made 
an alliance with the Dutch Provinces, then in actual 
rebellion against King Pliilip. This was equivalent to 
a declaration of war. Almost simultaneously a West 
Indian expedition was planned. This had the Queen's 
sanction, and in her economical way her aid ; that is, to 
the extent of granting the use of four armed ships to 
help make up his fleet of twenty-five. This was a type 
of the naval efforts of this reign. Partly they were sup- 
ported by the nation ; more largely by the liberality of 
the private purse. Drake, however, carried the Queen's 
commission, no longer chief adventurer, but England's 
admiral. The objects of the expedition were twofold ; 
to distract the King's attention, and so to draw his forces 
away from Holland ; and to weaken him financially by 
seizing some of the vast treasures whicli were flowing in 
from the New World. Measured by the Drake pattern, 
the expedition was a scant success. What it gained in 
numbers it seems to have lost in unity and vigor. Still 
it was not a failure. St. Domingo and Carthagena, 
great centres of Spanish wealth, were taken, partly 
burned, and what was left ransomed by a heavy pay- 
ment. A few Spanish towns on the coast of Florida 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 319 

were destroyed. The fleet returned, having given the 
Spaniards a thorough fright, and bringing home £60,000 
of booty, enough to repay the thrifty queen all her ad- 
vances and more. Unfortunate delays at the outset 
and much sickness at the end made greater success 
impossible. 

1587 was a memorable year in Drake's life. For then 
he stood forth a shield and buckler for all England. 
Then he opened the eyes that were blind to see her 
danger. You cannot explain Drake, Hawkins, Gren- 
ville, by calling them mere sea robbers. You have to 
remember the blindness of Queen Elizabeth and the 
duplicity of King Philip. You have to remember that 
all through the period of so called peace, enormous 
preparations for war w^ere going on in Spain ; that 
great ships were building ; that in all the great ports 
armaments were being collected, and supplies gathered 
for that invasion of England known as the Great 
Armada. Rumors of these proceedings were borne on 
all winds. Nay, direct information came to England's 
foreign minister. Still the Queen' clung to a delusive 
hope. These preparations were not for England, but 
Holland ; and so the good fortune of England and her 
very existence seemed about to be thrown away. "What 
the government could not see, the common people saw. 
These sailors might be according to our stricter modern 
ideas buccaneers, and even pirates, and no doubt by such 
a standard were. They may even have transgressed a 
little the loose conceptions of international obligation 
then prevalent. But sometliing higher than vulgar love 
of plunder dictated their course. They felt that they 
were fighting in a wild way their nation's battles. 

Drake at any rate was sick of mere buccaneer achieve- 



320 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

ments ; tired of striking feeble blows at the extremities 
of this vast empire. To use his own words, " he wanted 
to singe King Philip's beard." He proposed a for- 
midable attack upon the great ports of Spain ; that he 
" might show her Majesty what fare Philip was pre- 
paring for her " ; that he might inflict a blow which 
should delay the Armada ; and at any rate that British 
sailors might find out what these great galleys which 
threatened all Europe were made of. He wrung a 
reluctant consent from the Queen, and even obtained 
four warships and two tenders. The merchants of Lon- 
don added ten ships, other adventurers nine more. The 
total tonnage of the twenty-five vessels was only two- 
thirds that of a modern Cunard steamer, while the 
crews numbered but 2,300. But eleven ships were of 
fifty tons, and of no use in actual conflict. At the last 
moment the Queen weakened, and sent a messenger for- 
bidding an attack to be made on the great ports of 
Spain. It was too late. Drake, taking advantage of 
the first fair wind, had sailed on April 2d. The bold 
sailor was on his way. 

What followed is as fabulous as a tale from the 
Arabian Nights' Entertainments. In one fortnight he 
was in the great port of Cadiz. Despite the forts wliich 
feebly saluted him, despite twelve great galleys which 
he swept like leaves before him, he forced his way to the 
heart of the port. Forty-eight hours, as only men 
taught by experience of the value of time and opportu- 
nity could do, they burned and sank and destroyed. 
Fifty vessels with a tonnage twice that of the whole 
English squadron destroyed, — 4,000 pipes of wine, 
2,000 tons of biscuit, 3,000 tons of wheat, and all 
other things in proportion, is the story of destruction. 
Six hundred thousand dollars, not counting ships, six 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 321 

months' bread and drink for the fleet, and three months' 
provision for a small army, were brought away. Such 
is the sum total of two days at Cadiz. Sweeping west- 
ward to Cape St. Vincent on the way to Lisbon, Drake 
took and destroyed one hundred and fifty vessels, great 
and small, besides storming a fort or two. Looking 
into the entrance of Lisbon, he found perils too great 
even for his bold heart, and paused. Here the compo- 
site nature of the fleet wrought out the proper result. 
Sixteen private ships, thinking that enough had been 
done for glory, deserted him and went home. Nine 
ships, five of them the Queen's, remained with him. 
With these, sailing southward to the Azores, he inter- 
cepted and took a rich East Indian carrack, laden with 
five hundred thousand dollars. And so came home, 
having done his work thoroughly. He had illustrated 
his own principles, which he states curtly thus : " 1st, 
to serve his country ; 2d, to serve his proprietors ; 
3rd, to serve his own interests, of which he was not 
careless." 

One asks, " What was the result of this remorseless 
raid?" It saved England. Not alone by the prodigious 
injury it inflicted ; though that was a mighty stroke, and 
postponed the coming of the Armada a full twelve 
months. But equally because it revealed to all be- 
holders what a blow was impending, and more yet 
because it taught British sailors that their little barks, 
manned by those who had been rocked upon the deep 
from boyhood, might contend hopefully with the gigantic 
hulks of Spain, peopled indeed by brave men, but men 
who had no familiarity with ocean needs and ocean 
dangers. Drake came home to receive from the Queen 
only coldness and reproofs, — from the people un- 
bounded admiration. Well might he appeal from Eliza- 

21 



322 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

beth blind to Elizabeth restored to sight by the terrors 
of the Armada. 

The old tales of the Armada ; of its proud bearing as 
it steadily sailed up the Channel in a vast half-moon 
with tips seven miles apart ; and how, to use Drake's 
own words, " it was beaten and shuffled together from 
the Lizard to Calais, and from Calais driven with 
squibs from their anchors, and chased round about 
Scotland and Ireland " ; and how the ribs of many score 
of stout ships were left to rot on those same shores of 
Scotland and Ireland ; and how some thousands of 
brave gentlemen of Spain with their retainers went 
down to sleep in the waters of the German Ocean and 
of the narrow seas ; and how fifty-three battered hulks 
and a few thousand wretched men got back to Spain 
again ; and how with all that died forever Spain's naval 
supremacy ; — that old tale need not be told again, when 
so many times it has been so well told that every school- 
boy knows it. Enough to say, that while Charles 
Howard was Lord Admiral, and with his loyal heart, 
brave soul, and gentle manners was perhaps the best 
man of all England to keep together and efficient a 
fleet, three quarters of which was made up of volun- 
teers, Drake was the right arm. Old Fuller says, " Lord 
Admiral Howard was not a deep sailor ; an osier was 
admiral, the navy was oak ; and after all John Hawkins 
and Francis Drake counsellors." 

King Philip was not quite satisfied. " Great thanks 
were due Almighty God," he said, " that he could, if 
he pleased, send out many such fleets." Apparently 
he thought to try one more experiment. England was 
ready now to meet him more than half way. An cxpe- 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 323 

dition was fitted out of fifty ships and 15,000 men, with 
Drake as admiral and Sir John Norris as land com- 
mander. The make up of this fleet was curious. It 
shows how privateering ventures and national effort 
were welded into one warlike movement. The stock- 
holders in this enterprise were : — 

First, the Queen, in ships £16,000 

Second, Drake and friends 8,000 

Third, Norris and friends 20,000 

Fourth, City of London merchants . . . 15,000 

Total £59,000 

In fine, government one quarter, private purse three 
quarters. That was a fair sample of the way the best 
naval work was done in the sixteenth century. 

The result disappointed its projectors. For one 
reason, the vice of privateering is that it asks personal 
gain as a proof of success, and not increase of the com- 
mon good. Drake's success in Cadiz harbor had estab- 
lished, too, a standard not easily maintained. Still, an 
expedition which held for weeks Corunna, which de- 
feated in open field 15,000 men, which took many great 
ships and destroyed sixty merchantmen, filled with 
provisions, as it was supposed, for a new Armada, could 
hardly be called, by Spaniards at any rate, a failure. 

Drake's life closed in sadness and disappointment. 
In 1595 a fleet was fitted out under the joint command 
of Drake and John Hawkins. Its destination was the 
West Indies, the scene of the first achievements of both 
commanders. Its general purpose may be stated in the 
quaint language of the sailor who narrated its fortunes : 
" They held no better means to curbe the King's unjust 



324 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

pretences than by sending forces to invade him in that 
Kingdome, from whence he hath feathers to fly to the 
toppe of his high desires." The particular feather 
aimed at this time was a certain treasure ship detained 
in the harbor of Porto Rico, said to have on board some 
millions of bullion. This was a venture upon which Sir 
Fi-ancis Drake should not have been sent. In his youth, 
his skill to gain, his fame to win, with the ideas of his 
time it might have been well. But at fifty-four, the first 
sailor of England, the first sailor of the world, there was 
better work for him to undertake than this enterprise, 
half privateer, half guerilla. 

From the beginning there settled down upon it a great 
cloud of misfortune. First, there was the curse of a 
divided command. One chief was slow ; the other swift 
and impatient. The one a worn-out veteran of nearly 
eighty years ; the other in the prime of his strength. 
The old chronicle says : " Sir John Hawkins was joined 
in equal commission w^ith Drake, a man old and wary, 
entering into matters with so laden a foot that the 
other's meat would be eaten before his spit would come 
to the fire." It was not with a laden foot that Drake 
went forth to plough the waters of both hemispheres, 
and with his ship's keel to put a furrow round the world. 
Then all the English plans were known to the enemy. 
Maynarde suggestively says: "John Hawkins let out all 
his plans to the meanest mariner, so the first sailor that 
fell into Spanish hands found in the rack of the Inqui- 
sition a potent father confessor." Hawkins died of 
disappointments and hardships, too heavy for fourscore 
years. Drake found all the heights around Porto Rico 
bristling with cannon, great ships sunk at the entrance, 
war vessels awaiting his attack, and the treasure ship 
itself unladen and the bullion placed in safety. A des- 



FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 325 

perate boat attack was repulsed. It was then resolved 
to pass over the Isthmus and take Panama. Here, too, 
preparations had been made for their reception. Eight 
hundred and fifty Englishmen essayed to pass through 
forty-five miles of tropical luxuriance. Only two thirds of 
that distance had been achieved, when they came upon a 
rugged defence of rough palisade ; and behind it another, 
and then another ; while men were heard felling trees be- 
yond so as to make every rood's advance the scene of a 
new skirmish. At the outset the attack failed. The men 
came back, — so their annalist records, — "so wearied 
by the illness of the way, surbeated for want of shoes, 
and weak with their dyet, that it would have been a poor 
day's service we could have done an enemy. Drake 
never carried mirthe or joy in his face again." Here 
he began to sicken, and on the 27th of January, 1596, 
died. His body was enclosed in a leaden coffin, and 
dropped in the Bay of Porto Bello, there to rest, almost 
within sight of that Nombre de Dios where first he 
roughly woke the Spaniard from his dream of unchal- 
lenged supremacy of the seas, and unquestioned mo- 
nopoly of the commerce of half this earth; — within 
sight, too, of the eastern terminus of that isthmus rail- 
road, across which commerce, the restless spirit of 
adventure, curiosity, the Saxon love of roving, for so 
many years sent its great imexhausted human tide, 
Fit spot for him to rest ! The mightiest seaman of his 
age! Yet not one out of ten thousand that passes his 
ocean grave remembers his name or knows where he 
sleeps. So fades the glory of this world. 

I add no prolonged character. That is stamped on 
every part of his wonderful career. He was the transi- 
tion man from Viking to modern naval hero. He was 



326 FRANCIS DRAKE AND HIS TIMES. 

a sailor who never saw his superior, and who left no 
peer behind. Audacious in his plans to the verge of 
recklessness, he provided for their execution, in study 
of seas to be gone over, in the gathering of all needful 
supplies, in care of men, with a forecasting prudence 
which brought wildest dreams into the realms of solid 
reality. Before the bar of modern international law much 
of his conduct cannot stand. But the sixteenth cen- 
tury recognized no very close relations between nations, 
nor scanned the rights of an alien race with the eyes of a 
delicate conscience. Certainly he was a great deal more 
than a bold and skilful freebooter. Just as clearly he 
was a sober Englishman, fighting after his own fashion 
the battles of his native land, when her rulers had not 
vision to see her danger nor courage to face it. But 
take what view you may of his striking career, now 
that his name and fame are so nearly forgotten, it will 
do us no hurt to have recalled a few of the incidents of 
the life of Francis Drake, heroic Devon mariner, whose 
name stands second to none in that brief list of sea- 
kings in which are included Van Tromp the Dutch- 
man, Horatio Nelson, and our own Farragut, and a few 
beside. 



JOHN CALVIN. 

Printed in the Christian Examinee, Jdlt, 1860. 

1. Leaders of the Reformation. (Art. John Calvin.) By John 

Tulloch, D.D. Boston : Gould and Lincoln. 1860. 

2. The Life and Times of John Calvin. By Paul Henry, D.D. 

Translated from the German by Henry Stebbings, D.D., 
F.R.S. New York : Robert Carter and Brothers. 185i. 

3. The Life of John Calvin. By Thomas H. Dyer. New York : 

Harper and Brothers. 1850. 

4. History of the Life, Works, and Doctrines of John Calvin. 

By J. M. V. Audin. Translated from the French by Rev. 
John McGill. Baltimore : John Murphy. 

5. Westminster Review. (Art. Calvin at Geneva.) No. 137, 

July, 1858. 

AMPLE materials for a true understanding and just 
appreciation of the labors and merits of Calvin 
are now before the American reader. Henry's Life is 
a rich placer rather than available metal. It contains 
ore which will amply reward the careful miner. He 
has given us two huge, ill arranged, and not very read- 
able volumes, full of the results of patient research, 
and bearing everywhere the marks of two very different 
sentiments, — a genuine love of truth and a thorough- 
ness of idolatry for his hero not common even in biog- 
raphers. The result is that you have for the most part 
the real facts, from which you may form your own 
judgment ; and you have also extravagant theories and 



328 JOHN CALVIN. 

special pleadings, from whose influence you must sedu- 
lously guard yourself. Dyer's work, on the contrary, 
is clear, methodical, quite interesting, and, though 
neither so full nor profound as the former, apparently 
free from the influence of prejudice. Audin gives us 
the Romish view. His book is abusive without being 
vigorous; bitter and not witty; full of the parade of 
original research, yet carrying no conviction. Its 
chief value consists in furnishing an antidote to Hen- 
ry's undue adulation, TuUoch's article is a popular 
sketch, on the whole marked by a candid and liberal 
spirit, but from its brevity necessarily omitting the 
consideration of some points of largest interest and 
importance. The article in the Westminster Review, 
entitled "Calvin at Geneva," is a very ingenious 
attempt to prove that Calvin's destruction of liberty at 
Geneva was the salvation of liberty in Western Europe. 
Overstating the value of the Reformer's really great 
influence, and apparently overlooking other forces 
which existed independently of him, and would have 
worked out their results had he never lived, the author 
draws from the acknowledged premise that theological 
dissent providentially widened into political rebellion 
the enormous and questionable inference that Calvin 
was the great bulwark of freedom, against which the 
waves of tyranny beat in vain. For those who wish to 
study Calvin's own words, we have the excellent edition 
of his great work, published by the Presbyterian Board 
of Education, and translations of all or most of his 
Commentaries. So that, without reference to the more 
minute works in French and Latin, the English reader 
possesses the means of forming an intelligent judg- 
ment concerning the character and work of the great 
Reformer. 



JOHN CALVIN. 329 

The time of Calvin's appearance was auspicious. 
The Reformation had passed through its first stage. A 
great spiritual movement had been successfully inau- 
gurated. What the age now wanted most was a man 
who could give a spiritual direction to the discordant 
energies and aspirations of the times. Emphatically 
that man was John Calvin. Differ as we may in our 
estimate of his character and works, no one can doubt 
his ability to give wide and permanent sway to his own 
ideas of truth. A man bold in the fiields of theological 
inquiry rather than in the actual conflict of man with 
man ; by nature a recluse ; his proper weapon the pen, 
and not the sword or the eloquent tongue ; lacking the 
fiery courage which impelled Luther to go forward when 
the bravest might well draw back ; lacking too the 
kindling warmth and genial sympathies of the Saxon, 
— he yet had qualities which especially fitted him to 
meet and satisfy the great religious demand of the age. 
Not indeed a great original discoverer in the realms of 
truth, he was gifted with a mind vigorous, precise, and 
logical, and he shrank from no deduction of his reason, 
however terrible ; with a persistent will which nothing 
could daunt or turn; and, above all, with that power 
of classification which out of the fragmentary thoughts 
of more creative minds builds up a system logically 
coherent. He put in clear light, and bound together 
with strong bands of argument, and marshalled in 
battle array, the ideas which men were blindly cher- 
ishing, and which were shaking to their foundations the 
strong walls of Church and State ; and so his private 
life penetrates into and becomes a part of the public 
life. 

Of the early days of John Calvin we know but little. 
That he was born at Noyon, Picardy, July 10, 1509; 



330 JOHN CALVIN. 

that his father, Gerhard Calvin, was a man of severe 
character and more than ordinary probity and intelli- 
gence ; that his mother was profoundly religious after 
the fashion of her Church, and sought zealously to 
impress her Catholic piety upon her son, praying with 
him, often beneath the open sky; — these few scanty 
hints comprise all we know of the parentage and child- 
hood of this remarkable man. He owed his education 
to the bounty of the noble De Moramor family of 
Picardy. By their kindness he was saved from the 
hardships incident to a poor student's experience. 
Under their roof he was domesticated. With their sons 
he went to Paris to pursue his studies. From their 
patronage he received early preferment. At first he 
was destined for the Church, and indeed was appointed 
chaplain of the cathedral of Noyon at the early age of 
twelve years, and a little later began to preach, — a 
fact which he records with boyish exultation. But the 
portentous aspect of theological affairs and the parental 
ambition awakened by his extraordinary mental vigor 
conspired to work an entire change in his father's pur- 
pose, and in obedience to the paternal command he 
abruptly quitted the study of theology, and entered a 
school of law at Orleans. Here he made such progress 
in his new vocation that, when the question of the 
legality of the marriage of Henry VHI. was submitted 
to the learned bodies of Europe, Calvin, then only 
twenty-one, was personally consulted, and gave a 
written opinion favorable to the monarch's wishes. 
His later career as legislator at Geneva proves that this 
legal training was not lost upon him. Nay, the marks 
of that training may be found written deep in a char- 
acter whose prevailing tendency and weakness was a 
disposition to limit the range of thought, and to confine 



JOHN CALVIN. 331 

the warm, gushing religious sentiments, which are in 
their very nature liberal and expansive, within the 
narrow bounds of technical precedents and dogmatic 
creeds. 

In these student years the characteristics of his later 
life appear sharply deiined. A stern censor of morals 
in the schools, as afterwards at Geneva, he rebuked 
with unsparing severity the vices of his comrades. A 
bitter enemy declares that his fellow students at Orleans 
called him ''Monsieur Accusatif, " scornfully saying, 
"John knows how to decline as far as the Accusative 
case." He was always laborious. Withdrawing from 
society, maintaining the most abstemious habits, devot- 
ing his days and the larger portion of his nights to 
arduous and systematic study, he reaped the natural 
fruits of such a course, — exact erudition and a shat- 
tered physical frame. 

Biographers have not failed to notice the wide differ- 
ence between the youthful experience of Calvin and 
that of his great compeer, Luther. While young 
Martin, in the hut of the poor miner, was early inured 
to hardship, or in the village school, brutally beaten by 
a savage pedagogue, was painfully acquiring the rudi- 
ments of knowledge, or begging from house to house 
or singing in hamlets and villages for bread, Calvin, 
received into a noble family and enjoying a tender and 
even aristocratic nurture, wandered at will through the 
fertile fields of knowledge. This experience had its 
influence. It gave him those scholarly habits and that 
nice adjustment and balance of the faculties so essential 
to the dialectician. It could not give him that glorious 
nature of Luther's, in sympathy with all humanity. It 
could not give him those tumultuous passions, those 
gentle home affections, nor that lyric fire and elo- 



332 JOHN CALVIN. 

quence, wliich made Luther in the presence of men the 
mightiest of the sons of God. Courage he had; but 
not that courage which courts danger, not that courage 
which rides and controls the turbulent waves of popular 
agitation. His courage sprang rather from an inflexi- 
ble will ruling a timid nature. In obedience to that 
will he could encounter any danger, and with unflinch- 
ing vigor compel a whole city to bend to his fixed 
purpose. But not of choice. To the last, his recluse 
habit-s and aristocratic refinement clung to him. His 
true field was his study, his natural companions were 
books. 

At the age of twenty-one he stood to the worldly eye 
in an enviable position. At a period when most young 
men are looking forward to the future with anxiety and 
doubt, his success was secure. He had a mind of 
rare clearness and force. His legal attainments were 
acknowledged. He was sure of patronage. Yet even 
then influences were at work which were to call him 
away from the peaceful triumphs of a prosperous legal 
career to stormier scenes and a more transcendent 
success. The Romanist Audin says, that as early as 
the age of fourteen he had read the pestilent works of 
Luther, and lost the repose of faith. But of this there 
is no proof. Certain it is, however, that at the age of 
nineteen he met Pierre Robert Olivetain, a relative, 
a translator of the Holy Scriptures, and a Protestant, 
who did much to unsettle his faith in Catholicism. 
And at Bourgcs, whither he went from Orleans, he was 
confirmed in the new doctrine and diverted from the 
study of the law by the arguments and counsels of 
Melchior Wolmar, the Greek Professor. "Do you 
know," said he to his pupil one evening as they were 
taking their usual walk, "that your father has mis- 



JOHN CALVIN. 333 

taken your vocation ? It will do for Alciata to preach 
law, and for me to spout Greek ; but give yourself up 
to theology, the mistress of the sciences." Calvin 
recognized the wisdom of the advice. It is probable 
that before the death of his father he preached secretly. 
It is certain that immediately after that event he aban- 
doned his legal studies, came to Paris, and gave him- 
self wholly to the ministry, preaching with great zeal 
to the few Protestants who gathered by stealth for 
worship in that city. 

In 1533 Calvin for the first time brought upon him- 
self the open displeasure of the French authorities. 
The occasion was this. Nicholas Cap, Rector of the 
Sorbonne, was to have preached a sermon before the 
theological faculty of that University on a regular feast 
day. Having a leaning toward Protestantism, and 
perhaps distrusting his own very limited abilities, he 
employed Calvin to prepare his discourse. That dis- 
course covertly attacked the Catholic Church. The 
result may be imagined. The Sorbonne was in arms. 
The aid of the temporal power was invoked. Cap fled 
to Basle. The order was given for the arrest of 
Calvin, whose complicity was suspected. He escaped, 
as some will have it, by letting himself down from his 
window by a sheet, and assuming a vinedresser's frock, 
and in this disguise, a bag upon his back and a hoe 
upon his shoulder, taking the road to Noyon; or, as 
others with more probability assert, by the powerful 
interposition of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, sister 
of the King. 

For two years he lived the life of a fugitive, through 
all his wanderings and amid the surging waves of per- 
secution holding fast his faith, quietly extending his 
influence, pursuing his studies, putting his last touches 



334 JOHN CALVIN. 

to his great work, and waiting for the place which 
Providence was even then preparing for him. 

It was during these years of exile that he published 
the work by which he is most widely known, his " Insti- 
tutes of the Christian Religion." Dedicated to Francis 
I. in an epistle of such power that it has been included 
in the list of the Three Remarkable Prefaces, its object 
was to supply the French Protestants with a systematic 
manual of doctrine, while at the same time, by a pub- 
lication of the real opinions of the Reformers, it 
furnished a refutation of the slanderous accusations of 
the Papists. Calvin was already widely known, but 
this work raised him at once to a commanding position. 
It was not, indeed, on its first appearance, either in 
fulness or systematic arrangement, what it afterwards 
became. But its subsequent modifications were changes 
in form, not in substance; and it is the boast of his 
admirers that after the age of twenty-five he never 
materially changed an opinion. Says Beza, his inti- 
mate friend and eulogist, "The doctrine which he held 
at the first he held to the last," — a fact which marks 
not only his early maturity, but also that characteristic 
mental rigidity which never permitted him to reopen a 
question for fresh inquiry, or to see that there could 
be any ground, either in reason or conscience, for an 
opinion differing from his own. 

It is not our intention to analyze the contents of this 
book. It is known to all theologians as a body of 
divinity, comprehensive in its plan, systematic in its 
construction, logically coherent, full in its illustrations, 
whose corner stone is the doctrine of Predestination. 
Calvin has stated this doctrine with terrible con- 
ciseness when he says, "In conformity, therefore, to 
the clear doctrine of Scripture, we assert that, by an 



JOHN CALVIN. 335 

eternal and immutable counsel, God hath once for all 
determined both whom he would admit to salvation, 
and whom he would condemn to destruction. . . . For 
they are not all created with a similar destiny ; but 
eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal dam- 
nation for others." What constitutes a striking pe- 
culiarity — we had almost said charm — of the work, is 
the calm, perspicuous language, as far removed from 
passion and extravagance on the one hand as from 
timidity and vagueness on the other, with which the 
author propounds and elucidates doctrines from which 
every natural instinct revolts, — doctrines which lay 
the axe to the root of every principle of justice, which 
make God virtually the author of evil and plainly 
responsible for its continuance, and which destroy all 
reasonable inducements to struggle against depravity, 
whether native or acquired. It is instructive to see 
these terrible and dishonoring views of God and his 
dealings with men stripped of all sentimental glosses 
and disguises, and standing forth in their true char- 
acter. No better remedy can be prescribed to a 
desponding Liberal Christian than a perusal of Calvin's 
Institutes. Let such a one take down this book of old 
divinity, peruse its pages, comprehend its ideas, and 
then take courage and acknowledge that the world does 
move. Here is what half a century since was the 
spiritual food of our churches, as much the milk for 
babes as it was the meat for strong men. How is it 
now ? Very truly does Tulloch declare that " the 
old Institutio Christiance Religionis no longer satisfies, 
and a new Institutio can never replace it. A second 
Calvin in theology is impossible. " Freedom and pro- 
gress are now the laws of religious life, and will 
remain so. Some eyes may turn fondly backward, 



336 JOHN CALVIN. 

some hearts and pens may desperately resist the cur- 
rent, but they cannot stay it. The fearful and unbe- 
lieving may flee the Liberal ranks, and take shelter 
beneath the shadow of the past. Like the Arctic navi- 
gator, they may hope to secure their position by an- 
choring to vast fields of ice ; but meanwhile those very 
fields, impelled by an irresistible undercurrent, are 
drifting from their old moorings into temperate climes, 
to be dissolved by southern breezes and the rays of the 
sun's full orb. 

What gave the Listitutes their immediate influence 
was the fact that they furnished the first systematic 
expression of the thoughts which were burning in the 
hearts of those champions of the Reformation. But 
the book explains its own success. It has rare merits. 
Calvin apprehended his own position, and he dared to 
accept the logical consequences of his own premises ; 
and, to crown all, he knew how to present with crystal 
clearness his exact thought. Of the views of that 
school of religious philosophy to which he gave the 
name, no abler exposition has ever appeared. 

The time had now come when Calvin's life work was 
to assume a definite shape. In the summer of 1536, in 
the second year of his exile, he visited secretly the 
home of his childhood, and having disposed of his 
little patrimony, bade a final adieu to his native land. 
His purpose was to go to Basle. But the invasion of 
Lorraine by the Emperor Charles V. forced him to 
take a circuitous southern route. In the prosecution of 
this journey he reached Geneva, proposing to tarry 
there one night. But his presence was made known to 
William Farel, who had already preached the doctrines 
of the Reformation in that city, but whose hot and 
impulsive character made him unequal to the consoli- 



JOHN CALVIN. 337 

dation of his own work. Farel entreated Calvin to 
remain and assist him. Calvin replied that "he could 
not bind himself to one church, for by so doing he 
should have no time for his own improvement, and that 
he was not one of those who could be forever giving 
out and never receiving in. " Whereupon Farel, assum- 
ing the attitude of an ancient prophet, exclaimed, 
"Now I declare unto you in the name of Almighty 
God, to you who only put forth your studies as a pre- 
tence, that, if you will not help us to carry on the work 
of God, the curse of God will rest upon you, for you 
Avill be seeking your own honor rather than that of 
Christ." Calvin has himself recorded the impression 
made by this fearful expostulation. "I was kept at 
Geneva," he says, "not properly by any express exhor- 
tation or request, but rather by the terrible threaten- 
ings of William Farel, which were as if God had 
seized me by his awful hand from heaven. " He with- 
drew his objections, was elected Teacher of Theology 
and Preacher, and rose at once to paramount influence. 

Geneva, which was henceforth to be the scene of 
Calvin's labors, was perhaps the most favorable spot 
for the exercise of his peculiar influence. Situated on 
the western extremity of the beautiful lake of the same 
name, just outside the boundary of France, it gave the 
Reformer all the advantages, while it freed him from 
all the perils, of a residence in his native country. 
Nominally a fief of the Empire, and for many years 
under the sway of a bishop and the Dukes of Savoy, it 
had three years before, by its own prowess, and by the 
help of the Canton of Berne, achieved a real indepen- 
dence, and given in an open adhesion to the Reformed 
faith. In form, its government was republican ; in 
fact, an oligarchy. Its officers were four syndics, — to 

22 



338 JOHN CALVIN. 

whom the order and discipline of the city were con- 
fided, — an executive council of twenty-five, and a 
general council of two hundred. In theory, all impor- 
tant questions were under the direct control of the 
citizens. But as, in practice, nothing came before 
the citizens which had not received the sanction of the 
council of two hundred, and as that body undertook 
only such business as the council of twenty-five 
approved, it is easy to see in whose hands the real 
authority was vested. As the executive council, how- 
ever, consisted of the four syndics chosen annually by 
the people, of the four retiring syndics, the city treas- 
urer, and sixteen persons elected by the council of two 
hundred, it might be thought perhaps that this arrange- 
ment would practically limit its power. But when we 
consider that the syndics could be selected only from 
a meagre list of eight names submitted to the people 
by the executive council itself, and that the remaining 
sixteen members could be elected only from a list of 
thirty prepared also by the same body, and that the 
members of the council of two hundred were in fact 
creatures of the executive council, being nominated 
and chosen by it, we readily perceive that the barriers 
to its power were likely to be sufficiently feeble. Indeed, 
with some limitations growing out of the impossibility 
of overriding entirely the will of a people trained to 
freedom by long conflicts, the authority of the execu- 
tive council was absolute. To sway it was to rule 
Geneva. We must bear these facts in mind if we would 
understand how Calvin acquired his all-controlling 
influence. 

His position was one of great difficulty. At first he 
had been received with open arms; but soon a bitter 
opposition arose. This was due in part to the unsettled 



JOHN CALVIN. 339 

condition of affairs, but more to the essential repulsion 
which existed between the rigid nature of Calvin and 
the free disposition of the native Genevans. These 
seem to have been a gay volatile people, who loved not 
to look on the stern side of life; who were fond of 
music and dancing, fond of dress and show; who did 
not object to a play or cards, nor, it is to be feared, to 
wine and revelry and the grosser vices. To such a 
people came John Calvin, — a man who despised all 
these things, — who considered them to be heinous 
sins, — a man of grave manners and austere character, 
engaged in a work to which he felt everything else 
must bow. A conflict was inevitable. The nominal 
causes of discontent were, that the clergy refused to 
their flock permission to erect in the churches baptismal 
fonts, to celebrate four feast days in the year, and to 
eat unleavened bread at the communion, privileges 
which were enjoyed by the churches in the neighboring 
Canton of Berne. The real cause was a desire to 
throw off that stern church discipline which Calvin 
would impose upon them, — a discipline which must 
have pressed with intolerable severity upon such a 
people ; which forbade all dancing and cards, all mas- 
querades and plays ; which would have no pomp and 
festivities at marriages ; which doomed the bride her- 
self to imprisonment, if she dared to wear on her 
wedding day flowing tresses; and which must have 
made the whole week seem to the light-hearted Genevese 
a long Puritan Sabbath. On the points at issue Calvin, 
with his usual inflexibility, declined all concession. 
The citizens sought the advice of Berne. The authori- 
ties of that town addressed to Calvin and his colleagues 
a letter, couched in courteous language, recommending 
conciliation. The advice was spurned. Whereupon 



340 JOHN CALVIN. 

the Genevan council passed an order enjoining submis- 
sion. The preachers refused to obey. The council 
directly ordered them to administer communion with 
unleavened bread. They flatly declared that they 
would not administer the communion at all to so dis- 
orderly and licentious a people. Forbidden to preach, 
they despised the order, and delivered discourses reflect- 
ing severely upon the authorities. At once there was 
a tumult. Swords were drawn, and the lives of the 
preachers threatened. The next morning the council 
commanded them to leave the city within three days. 
They departed, Calvin saying, " Very well, it is better 
to serve God than man." At once the fonts were 
raised, the feasts kept, the unleavened bread eaten, and 
even greater license of manners prevailed. Rigid as 
was Calvin's nature, it is idle to suppose that he made 
a stand at such cost on matters which he himself con- 
fessed to be immaterial. Underneath them he saw 
greater questions, — whether the temporal authorities 
should interfere in matters of church discipline, and 
whether too he should relinquish those purposes dear 
to his heart, which proposed nothing less than to build 
at Geneva a Christian commonwealth, based on his 
own narrow and austere conceptions. On such ques- 
tions it was not in the heart of Calvin to bend. 

During the three years of his banishment he resided 
at Strasburg, where he accepted a call as assistant min- 
ister. They were busy years, and, so far as his real 
influence was concerned, not lost years. He devoted 
himself assiduously to literary labors. He attended 
the Diets at Frankfort, Worms, and Ratisbon, and 
came into personal contact with the leaders of the 
Reformation, and suffered nothing by a comparison 
of his mind and powers with theirs. At Worms, 



JOHN CALVIN. 341 

Melanchthon conferred upon him the appropriate title of 
" the theologian. " While residing at Strasburg Calvin 
was married. A biographer has said that " Calvin in 
love was a peculiar phase in history. " And it must be 
confessed that his feelings were not of that ecstatic 
kind which takes captive the judgment. On the con- 
trary, he seems to have had a keen eye to his own com- 
fort. In a letter to Farel he says : " I beseech you to 
bear in mind what I seek in a wife. I am not one of 
your mad kind of lovers, who doats even upon faults, 
when once they are taken by beauty of person. The 
only beauty that entices me is that she be chaste, 
obedient, humble, economical, and that there be hopes 
that she will be solicitous about my health. " If, how- 
ever, Calvin had few of the transports of a lover, he 
manifested what was better, the fidelity and care of a 
true Christian husband. Of his domestic life we have 
but few glimpses, but those few are altogether favorable 
to his character. He ever exhibited a grave affection 
and kindness, befitting well his serious and reserved 
character. For years after the death of his wife, he 
deplored her loss with a sober grief, which proved the 
sincerity and depth of his regard. He had but one 
son, who died in infancy. His enemies taunted him 
with his childless state. His answer is pathetic in its 
simplicity : " Baldwin reproaches me as childless. God 
gave me a little son ; He took him away again. " 

The way was now opening for his return to Geneva. 
What ensued in that city after his departure furnishes 
perhaps the best defence of his course. Released from 
his stern discipline, a madness seems to have possessed 
the people. Not only did they return to their old 
frivolous life ; not only did they restore the innocent 
amusements, the music and the dance, the masquerades 



342 JOHN CALVIN. 

and the plays, the gay marriage festivities and similar 
pleasures ; but they plunged more deeply than ever into 
vice. The streets resounded with blasphemy and inde- 
cent songs ; and so far did this license go, that persons 
paraded the streets stark naked, keeping step to martial 
music. The successors of Calvin, men of moderate 
talents and not unstained reputations, were powerless. 
Two, disgusted and disheartened, threw up their com- 
missions. Things went from bad to worse. The city 
was torn by dissensions. The rival factions met in 
the streets in bloody conflict. At last a leader of the 
Artichokes — so the party opposed to Calvin named 
itself — killed his adversary, and was doomed to death. 
Another, accused of sedition, in an attempt to escape 
the officers of justice, jumped from a window and broke 
his neck. Two more, suspected of treason, fled the 
city. These tilings broke the power of the party, until 
finally the citizens, sick of the tumult, sick of violence 
and impudent lust, ready to bear anything rather than 
this scourge of sedition and vice, with one consent 
turned to Calvin for relief. 

Calvin came back to Geneva with unfeigned reluc- 
tance. We have seen that, though he had an unbending 
will, his natural disposition was timid, and his tastes 
such as made him shrink from scenes of tumult. He 
plainly foresaw the conflict which his rigid principles 
made inevitable. "Pardon me," he says, in a frank 
letter to Farel, "if I do not willingly throw myself 
again into that whirlpool. When I remember what has 
passed, I cannot help shuddering at the thought of 
being compelled to renew the old conflicts." Not until 
he had received three invitations, and not until he had 
been subjected to the angry expostulations of his 
brethren, could he resolve to return. 



JOHN CALVIN. 343 

He came back a conqueror. Not a point had he con- 
ceded. Not a word of conciliation had he breathed. 
He came with his power increased, and with a determi- 
nation to use that power with no sparing hand. He 
came, resolved to bend the inconstant Genevans to his 
will, to root out their gay, vicious life, and to build 
them up after that stern model which his tastes, his 
habits, and his conscience alike approved. He estab- 
lished an iron despotism, which not only repressed all 
free opinion, but took cognizance of daily actions, and 
even unguarded words. He lost no time in attempting 
to put into practice his theories of church and state 
government. Within three days of his return to Geneva 
he had represented to the council that there was "a 
necessity for a scheme of discipline agreeable to the 
word of God and the practice of the ancient Church." 
What he desired was not progress, but consolidation ; 
not a polity which should encourage fresh inquiry and 
new advances in the knowledge of truth, but one which 
should organize and perpetuate those opinions to which 
he himself had attained, and which he implicitly 
believed to be in each and every particular a faithful 
transcript of God's laws. To achieve this end, he 
sought to establish on an enduring basis a church and 
state closely connected in aim, in spirit, and in meas- 
ures, — a church which in its own province should be 
strictly independent of the state, but whose mandates 
should be supported by the civil power, — a state which 
should not confine itself to matters of temporal interest, 
to the regulation of social relations, and to the repres- 
sion of crime and dangerous immorality, but which 
should punish with unsparing severity the errors of 
opinion, the private vices, and the indulgence of those 
innocent customs and recreations which were con- 
demned by the spiritual authorities. 



344 JOHN CALVIN. 

He carried triumphantly through the councils his 
schemes of church polity. The duties of the church 
and state were carefully discriminated, and the secular 
power as carefully excluded from all interference in 
ecclesiastical matters. The control of the church 
rested in a consistory, composed of six ministers and 
twelve laymen, chosen by the council of twenty-five 
from a list prepared by the clergy. It is a striking 
evidence of the power of Calvin, that, without any elec- 
tion, he assumed and kept during life the presidency of 
this body. The power of the consistory extended only 
to the reprimanding and excommunication of the of- 
fenders. If they continued obstinate, they were handed 
over to the temporal power to receive a punishment, 
which under Calvin's influence was almost as inevita- 
ble as destiny. 

Having finished his ecclesiastical labors, he was next 
called by the council to revise the laws of the state. 
The direct tendency of his labors was to take the power 
out of the hands of the people, and to concentrate it in 
the council of twenty-five. For instance, it had been 
no uncommon thing to originate business in great 
public meetings; now nothing was to be transacted 
there, or even at the meetings of the council of two 
hundred, which had not first been sanctioned by the 
all-powerful council of twenty-five. Previous to his 
coming, these citizens' meetings could be called at the 
request of any member of the council of two hundred ; 
now, such a request Avas of itself considered to be an 
evidence of a seditious spirit. The influence of Calvin 
was felt too in the increasing severity of the laws, 
whose rigor grew every year more intolerable, and 
whose widening application threatened to take from 
the citizens all freedom, even in the most minute and 



JOHN CALVIN. 345 

private interests of life. That influence was nearly 
omnipresent as well as all-powerful at Geneva. " One 
reads," says his admiring biographer and eulogist, 
"with astonishment, essays in his handwriting on 
questions of pure administration, on all kinds of 
matters of police, on modes of protection from fire, as 
well as instructions for the inspectors of buildings, for 
the artillery superintendent, and for the keepers of the 
watch-towers." And he adds, "If Calvin therefore 
considered a new law necessary, he appeared before the 
council and demanded it in the name of the consistory. " 
So that in a literal rather than a figurative sense it has 
been said that "he was the main-spring of the Genevan 
republic, which set all its wheels in motion." 

That such an authority was not attained without 
opposition may be readily believed. For years a 
powerful party struggled desperately against his in- 
creasing authority, sometimes with a prospect of suc- 
cess, but generally overmatched by his superior genius 
and perseverance. At length, in 1556, rising against 
him, four of its members were executed, the rest ban- 
ished, their property confiscated, and the mention of 
their return made a capital offence. What were the 
real character and principles of this party it is not easy 
to determine with any definiteness. Their enemies have 
written their history, and the title of Libertines, with 
which those enemies stigmatized them, yet clings to 
their memory. That all those uneasy and reckless 
spirits, who hated Calvin's yoke because he repressed 
their vicious inclinations, contributed to swell the 
numbers of the party, is probable. That a few entered 
its ranks whose opinions struck at the root of all reli- 
gious faith, and all personal virtue, and even of all 
social safety, is also probable. But that the leaders as 



346 JOHN CALVIN. 

a body were men of intelligence, rectitude, and noble 
aims, — men who sighed for rational freedom, and for 
a just influence in civic affairs, — is still more evident. 
They had risked their fortunes and their lives in a 
conflict with the Church and with the Dukes of Savoy, to 
deliver themselves from the burden of superstition and 
the chains of despotism. And it is not wonderful that 
they did not submit easily to a government which 
robbed them at the same time of personal freedom and 
of that public consideration which naturally belonged 
to men who had birth, wealth, culture, and a career 
spent in their city's service, to recommend them. 
They sought, not unbridled license, but liberty of 
thought and speech. Henry, in the midst of a glowing 
eulogy of Calvin, makes the remarkable admission that 
"■ the Libertines desired nothing but emancipation from 
the despotism of Savoy and the establishment of free 
institutions." What naturally awakened their fears 
was the fact that Geneva was virtually coming again 
under a foreign yoke. Refugees from every quarter, 
driven from their homes by religious persecution, fled 
thither. They were welcomed by Calvin and his col- 
leagues. Peculiar privileges were conferred upon them. 
As soon as possible they received the rights of citizen- 
ship, as many as three hundred having been enrolled 
in one day. These men, from gratitude, from interest, 
and from the sympathy of common opinions, allied 
themselves closely to Calvin, and warmly supported 
him in all his measures. Quite early their numbers 
were sufficiently great to arouse the jealousy of the 
native Genevans. In the end they so increased as to 
enable him to drive into exile those who had fought to 
achieve the freedom of the city, and who had occupied 
the highest places of trust and influence. The Liber- 



JOHN CALVIN. 347 

tines may have erred in judgment in some of their 
measures; but in their aspirations for rational free- 
dom, and in their struggles to maintain it, they deserve 
the sympathy of every liberal mind, and the more that 
in that contest they perilled and lost everything. 

It is becoming the fashion to speak of John Calvin 
as a champion of political liberty. Indeed, one of our 
prominent reformers, one whose whole life has been 
marked by a rare devotion to the cause of human 
rights, has taken occasion to use language which has 
the force of a eulogy on Calvin as the creator or 
defender of Republicanism. If by this it is meant 
that he asserted some principles which, freed from his 
general system, and received and interpreted by more 
liberal minds, and advanced by more enlightened 
spirits, have yielded the good fruit of personal and 
political liberty, we allow, though with some doubts, 
that the position may have foundation in fact. If it is 
meant that his "Spartan discipline" trained up men 
who were ready to hurl themselves against kings and 
nobles. Church and State, rather than yield one iota of 
their convictions; and that thus, amid the chaos of 
civil war and the wreck of institutions and powers, 
God's providence evolved by their instrumentality the 
grand principles of personal and national enfranchise- 
ment, we shall not deny it. Nay, we go further, and 
say that, inasmuch as the Reformation itself was an 
uprising against the old and the established order, it 
was natural for the noble and the privileged to array 
themselves on one side, while the common people 
arrayed themselves on the other, often passing from 
theological rebellion to political rebellion. But, as 
Hallam has justly remarked, " it is a fallacious view of 
the Reformation to fancy that it sprung from any 



348 JOHN CALVIN. 

notions of political liberty." Still further, as Calvin- 
ism was a more radical departure from Romanism than 
the system established by Luther, this tendency to 
which we have adverted was likely to be more distinct 
and influential where it prevailed. But to maintain 
that Calvinism has always been on the side of freedom, 
or, with Buckle, that " Calvinism is always democratic 
and Arminianism aristocratic," is to maintain what is 
not true. In Holland, for generations, it was not the 
Calvinists, but the Arminians, who struggled for repub- 
lican liberty. In Holland it was the Calvinists, allied 
to Maurice of Nassau, who put to death Barneveldt, 
whose unstained character and freedom from all sus- 
picion of selfish aims, and whose fifty years of unde- 
viating attachment to the principles of political and 
religious liberty and untiring labor for their advance- 
ment made him the very impersonation of rational 
patriotism. It is in New England, where Arminianism 
and the spirit of Liberal Christianity have wrought 
most powerfully on religious opinions, on literature 
and social life, that the spirit of democracy rises high- 
est, and the hatred of oppression is most profound 
and vehement. It is in the South, whose theology 
bears the decided impress of Calvinism, that aristoc- 
racy the proudest and slavery the most cruel are cher- 
ished institutions. Certainly, there is no necessary 
alliance between the rigid formula and the principles 
of human equality and freedom. Especially to affirm 
that Calvin himself was by conviction a republican, 
or that he felt one throb of sympathy for human free- 
dom in any large and generous sense, is to affirm that 
which has not the shadow of a foundation in fact. He 
of all men would have repelled it as an aspersion. By 
nature he was a despot; by taste, a monarchist; by 



JOHN CALVIN. 349 

conviction, an oligarchist. In fact, he established an 
unmitigated despotism. When he had finished his 
work at Geneva, he left her citizens but little either of 
political, religious, or personal freedom. In his Insti- 
tutes he maintains the divine right of kings and the 
duty of passive obedience. In his chapter on Civil 
Government he thus expresses his views: "It has hap- 
pened in almost all ages that some princes, regardless 
of everything to which they ought to have directed 
their attention, give themselves up to their pleasures in 
indolent exemption from every care ; others, absorbed 
in their own interest, expose for sale all laws, privi- 
leges, rights, and judgments ; others plunder the public 
of wealth, which they afterwards lavish in mad prodi- 
gality; others commit flagrant outrages, pillaging 
houses, violating virgins and matrons, and murdering 
infants. Many cannot be persuaded that such ought to 
be acknowledged as princes whom as far as possible 
they ought to obey. . . . But if we direct our attention 
to the word of God, it will carry us much further : even 
to submit to the government not only of those princes 
who discharge their duty to us with becoming integrity 
and fidelity, but of all who possess the sovereignty, 
even though they perform none of the duties of their 
function." Again : " If we have this constantly present 
to our eyes and impressed upon our hearts, that the 
most iniquitous kings are placed upon their thrones 
by the same decree by which the authority of all kings 
is established, those seditious thoughts will never enter 
our minds, that a king is to be treated according to his 
merit, and that it is not reasonable for us to be subject 
to a king who does not on his part perform toward us 
those duties which his office requires." Language 
could hardly convey a more complete assertion of the 



350 JOHN CALVIN. 

divine right of kings, and the duty of passive obedience 
on the part of the governed. Any oppression, however 
intolerable, might find a shelter beneath so broad an 
apology. Charles I. and Strafford and not Vane and 
Hampden, the Cavaliers and not the Roundheads, are 
the true exponents of such a doctrine. The legitimate 
tendency of such language was early perceived. Sir 
Dudley Digges, the fit representative of a father who 
was a smooth patriot under James I., and as smooth a 
courtier under Charles L, in a work entitled "The Un- 
lawfulnesse of Subjects taking up Armes against their 
Soveraigne, in what Case soever," quotes Calvin to 
sustain his servile arguments. And Calvin's admiring 
biographer frankly acknowledged that he had no love 
for the republican form of government, and makes it a 
reason for eulogy that he did not, like Knox, give to 
Protestantism a political tendency. It is true that 
Calvin limits his general position so far as regards 
religious opinions and duties. But even here he so 
carefully guards his statement, that no oppression, 
however intolerable, or crime, however monstrous, 
would justify either active resistance or secret plots. 
So that if any one believes that in theory or in fact 
Calvin was a champion of freedom, he must do it in 
opposition to the testimony both of the Reformer's 
words and Ms practice. 

Consider for a moment what his practice was, for in 
that we have an ample illustration of the spirit and 
meaning of the theory. The government civil and 
ecclesiastical which he established at Geneva, or which 
was established there under his influence, realizes in 
a broader sense than the author used it what Hallam 
has said, that " the Reformation was but a change of 
masters." We have already seen that, so far as Cal- 



JOHN CALVIN. 351 

vin meddled with the framework of the government, 
he did so only that he might take the control of affairs 
out of the hands of the many and place it in the hands 
of the few. And the regulations which those few 
enacted were of the most vexatious and tyrannical 
nature, violating the rights of conscience, and the right 
of private judgment in matters of a purely personal 
nature. Here are a few of them. He who absented 
himself from church was fined. If one was sick three 
days and failed to give notice to the ministers, he was 
liable to be punished. Dancing, cards, masquerades, 
and the wearing of tresses or clothing not according to 
the church pattern, were met by imprisonment or the 
scourge, the pleasant vices of the Genevans by death. 
In 1546 one Chapuis was imprisoned four days, because 
he persisted in calling his child Claude, instead of 
Abraham as the minister required, and because he 
said that he would rather that his child went fifteen 
years unchristened than accept the name. Ami Perrin, 
who more than once filled the highest offices of the 
state, had been active in securing Calvin's recall. 
The wife and father in law of this man were imprisoned 
for dancing. To a remonstrance against this degrad- 
ing treatment, Calvin broadly intimated that they 
might seek a home elsewhere if they pleased, but while 
at Geneva would have to submit to such regulations; 
an answer which, coming from a foreigner to those 
who had been largely instrumental in securing the city's 
freedom, and from one who had derived from them 
much of the very power by which he crushed them, 
must have been sufficiently galling. And what made 
the yoke of Genevan bondage yet more bitter was the 
system of espionage which caught up and reported every 
unguarded word or act. 



352 JOHN CALVIN. 

The most remarkable feature, however, of Genevan 
administration was the severity with whicli any disre- 
spect to Calvin was punished. Berthelier was excom- 
municated because he said that he thought that he was 
as good a man as Calvin. A lady of Ferrara for a 
similar offence was forced to beg pardon of God and 
man, and to leave the city in twenty-four hours on 
pain of being beheaded. And these are not solitary 
instances, but the like were of almost daily occurrence. 
The culmination of this form of tyranny was seen in 
the case of Pierre Ameaux, himself a member of the 
council of two hundred. This man at a party in his 
own house, under the influence of wine, was foolish 
enough to say "that Calvin was a wicked man, and 
only a Picard. " For this offence he was arrested and 
lay in jail two months, when, confessing his fault, and 
upon the payment of a fine amounting to sixty dollars, 
he was released. Whereupon Calvin, deeply incensed, 
came before the council attended by the clergy, and 
demanded a revision of the sentence, saying, "There 
was an end of all discipline if matters were thus dealt 
with." Ameaux was re-arrested, forced to make the 
amende honorable, marching through the town in his 
shirt, with bare head, torch in hand, and concluding 
by falling on his knees, and expressing his contrition. 
Are we reading the annals of some irresponsible Ori- 
ental despotism ? Even the inflexible Frederic of 
Prussia was willing that his subjects should say what 
they pleased, while he did what he pleased. 

But the despotic character of Genevan ]iolicy was 
most clearly displayed in its treatment of religious 
opinions. In this respect no liberty was allowed. To 
fall away from the state religion was to lose the rights 
of citizenship and to assume the character of a criminal. 



JOHN CALVIN. 353 

Calvin's view, no doubt' conscientiously adopted, was, 
that whoever opposed God's truth deserved punishment, 
and might be justly removed by banishment, and if 
necessary by death. His mind, which never knew the 
doubts and changes which disturb the experience of 
most men, considered all opinions differing from his 
own to be the offspring of impudence, or petulance, or 
madness. "If any man should call in question," says 
he, "the existence of Plato, or Aristotle, or Cicero, who 
would deny that such madness ought to receive corporal 
punishment ? " "Those who despise the honor of God 
must be punished with the sword," is his axiom. Such 
were the principles on which he acted ; and the history 
of Geneva for twenty -five years was a commentary on 
these views. 

Look at some of the results of this entire abrogation 
of free inquiry. Jerome Bolsec had fled from Paris on 
account of religious opinions, and established himself 
as a physician at Geneva. He seems to have been a 
man of character and some intellectual force, and suc- 
ceeded at any rate in securing the confidence of the 
leading citizens and of Calvin himself. Soon, however, 
he expressed in private doubts of the doctrine of Pre- 
destination. He was admonished, but remained uncon- 
vinced. He crowned his offence by a public declaration 
of his opinions. Taking advantage of a custom which 
permitted even laymen to make remarks upon religious 
discourses, he rose in the church of St. Andrew after a 
sermon on the doctrine of Election, and put the follow- 
ing very pertinent questions : " How can you believe 
that God has determined the lot of every man before 
his birth, destining this one to sin and punishment, 
and that one to virtue and eternal reward ? "Would 
you make God, the Eternal and Righteous One, a sense- 



35-1 JOHN CALVIN. 

less tyrant ? Would you rob virtue of its glory, free 
vice from its shame, and the wicked from the terrors 
of conscience ? " For this he was brought before the 
council, and, refusing to retract, was banished. Cal- 
vin's own recorded words make it at least probable that 
only the interposition of the ministers of Berne saved 
Bolsec from the penalty of death, or at least that of 
imprisonment for life ; and this, too, when apparently 
on all points except the dark and mysterious question 
of God's decrees he was in perfect agreement with the 
Genevan Church. 

The second case is still more interesting. Sebastian 
Castellio, at the request of Calvin, came to Geneva, 
and became the Rector of the High School. He was a 
man of profound culture, a scholar among scholars, 
with a devotion to learning which neither misfortune, 
poverty, nor hunger could cool, — a man of gentle temper 
and a liberality which raised him high above his age. 
This man in an evil day left the serene walks of litera- 
ture to enter the theological arena. He maintained 
that Solomon's Song was an amatory poem, and not 
deserving a place in the Canon, especially adverting to 
the seventh chapter. He added to his offence by doubt- 
ing the truth of that horrible dogma of Calvin's by 
which he asserts that Jesus not only suffered corpore- 
ally on the cross, but went down into hell, and there 
in his soul endured the dreadful torments of condemned 
spirits. Calvin angrily expostulated with him; and 
he retorted with warmth, severely reflecting upon the 
selfish and unjust course of Calvin and his colleagues. 
The council unceremoniously banished him. The 
closing scenes of CastcUio's life are full of sadness. 
Poverty came upon him like an armed man. With 
eight children to support by his pen, he was forced to 



JOHN CALVIN. 355 

go with the poor of Basle to the side of the river, hook 
in hand, to fish up, if might be, driftwood to warm his 
desolate home. But all was unavailing. He perished 
of cold and hunger. Living in an age when the true 
principles of religious freedom were not so much as 
dreamed of by most, he needs no higher eulogium than 
has been bestowed upon him by an enthusiastic defender 
of Calvin in the guise of criticism: "Castellio con- 
tinued all his life through the same noble but absurd 
defender of unlimited toleration. " The language with 
which he replies to the attacks of his opponent and 
persecutor, who had not hesitated to heap upon him 
opprobrious epithets, and who had not respected even 
his misery, but had distorted that unhappy necessity 
which drove him to depend upon the river's bounty 
into thefts, is full of gentleness and dignity : " Were I 
as truly all these things as I really am not, yet it ill 
becomes so learned a man as yourself, the teacher of so 
many others, to degrade so excellent an intellect by so 
foul and sordid abuse." 

We shrink from the mention of the case of Michael 
Servetus. Every true friend of Calvin, every one who 
believes that he had some of the elements of the highest 
greatness and virtue, must wish that this foul spot 
could be erased from the record of the great Reformer's 
life. We shall not recall the details of the mournful 
and too familiar story. It concerns us here, not as it 
illustrates the unchristian temper and deep malignity 
of Calvin's spirit, but only as it bears on his claim to 
be regarded as the friend of liberty. It was never pre- 
tended that the noble Spaniard. had in any way offended 
against the laws of Geneva. The heresies with which 
he was charged had been committed under another 
jurisdiction, and by a subject of the Church of Rome. 



356 JOHN CALVIN. 

The unfortunate man was a fugitive from the holds of 
the Inquisition, seeking shelter in a Protestant city 
from Romish persecution, when he fell into the hands 
of a new inquisitor, as remorseless as any who had 
wielded that office in the elder Church. 

Calvin's hest defence is, that he acted in accordance 
with the spirit of the age, and that he did no more 
than many others would have done had they stood in 
his place. Whether this plea, in itself true, altogether 
explains his course, or whether his convictions of duty 
were made more ardent by personal dislike of one who 
had denied his authority, attacked his opinions, ridi- 
culed his arguments, and doubted his character, we 
shall not undertake to decide. 

The facts to which we have adverted prove incontest- 
ably that Calvin was neither in theory nor practice an 
intelligent supporter of freedom, whether political, 
religious, or personal. He had no sympathy with the 
human yearning for untrammelled liberty of thought 
and action; especially he had little faith in the masses, 
and ])y nature was intolerant of opposition. To call 
him a champion of liberty, or the father of republican- 
ism, is simply to give the reins to the wildest vagaries 
of fancy, or to the largest license of eulogy. Yet we 
need not be harsh to the memory of the man. With 
him, as with many another, the private purpose and 
the public policy must be divided. Though we cannot 
place one who was so poorly endowed on the side of his 
sympathies, and so largely endowed with severity and 
pride of opinion, in the first rank of Christian man- 
hood, every candid mind must allow that it was from 
honest conviction that he sustaine'd his doctrines by 
the scourge and the stake. We can readily understand 
how Calvin, whose conservative mind never felt the 



JOHN CALVIN. 357 

lust of theological roving, whose untempted experience 
bred but little charity for others' faults, should trample 
down with grim satisfaction the light and frivolous 
Genevans, and the lawless theologians, who put in 
peril his dearest notions of religious truth and church 
polity. So did those terrible Commonwealth men, 
before whom went down the delights of life, and under 
whose iron tramp kings and nobles and prelates alike 
were ground to the dust. But whatever we may think 
of the man, and whatever apology we may find for his 
manifest faults, we cannot put out of sight his system, 
his inexorable system, — a system which, so far as reli- 
gious freedom was concerned, was not at all in advance 
of that Romanism which it superseded, and which, in 
respect to personal and civil rights, may vie with the 
most thorough despotism of modern or ancient times. 
If rational liberty in these later days has made any 
advance, it is not by help of John Calvin, but in spite 
of him; and his nominal followers, who have often 
been in the van of the good fight for man and his privi- 
leges, have really discarded the opinions of him by 
whose name they are known. 

It would be unjust to deny that Calvin's career at 
Geneva had a fairer side, or to doubt that his despot- 
ism, intolerable as it was to any free mind, had its 
compensations. That it was a despotism which had 
its origin in intense religious convictions, that it was 
the despotism of a man of pure morals, not to say 
ascetic habits, is sufficient proof that it could not have 
been a base and vulgar despotism. Its aims may have 
been false, its measures unjust, its demands vexatious, 
and altogether inconsistent with the exercise of private 
rights; it may have denied all culture to one side of 
human nature, but it could not have fostered weakness 



358 JOHN CALVIN. 

or encouraged vice. If we could allow that a system 
can ever be permanently a blessing which runs counter 
to that Divine order by which human virtue must be 
the result of free choice and a voluntary practice of 
goodness, then we might allow that in many respects 
his way was beneficial to the native Genevans. This 
at least it did accomplish, — it wrought an outward 
reform. While it destroyed their freedom, and abridged 
their pleasures, and despised the graces and the arts, 
it also scourged with unrelenting severity their vices ; 
it enforced an unnatural sobriety, but at the same time 
gave to their lives more gravity, more vigor, and per- 
haps more worth. The old Geneva, whose genial life 
seemed in keeping with the merry Rhone that dances 
through its streets, was replaced by a new Geneva, 
whose stern and immovable life was patterned from the 
cold and icy Alpine peaks which overfrown it. From 
this stronghold, with none to dispute his sway, sur- 
rounded by a social life congenial alike to his feelings 
and convictions, Calvin toiled through his few remain- 
ing years with untiring assiduity, by word and by pen, 
for the extension of his influence, and the dissemina- 
tion of his views of doctrine and of theocratic order. 
Thither from every quarter came the exiles in the cause 
of religion, — men whose indomitable wills and fixed 
convictions had enabled them to dare the vengeance 
of power, — men originally cast in iron moulds, — • 
men whose experience of hardship and oppression had 
shorn from them the gentler qualities only to add con- 
centrated energy, and who were thus fitted to receive 
from Genevan discipline what it was eminently fitted 
to impart, fresh intensity of faith, a sterner interpre- 
tation of life, and courage hardened to adamant by its 
Christian fatalism and ascetic training. It would bo 



JOHN CALVIN. 359 

exaggeration to assert that Calvin moulded these men 
and sent them forth with his stamp upon them to do 
his work; for they came to him in the maturity of their 
strength, with characters brought by a similar expe- 
rience into sympathy with his own. But he deepened 
what was already profound, and confirmed what indeed 
was not wavering. To say what in substance has often 
been said, that he created the Puritan character, would 
be equally an exaggeration. That character, like his 
own, in its virtues and its defects, in its stubborn 
hardihood and its remorseless severity, in its clear 
apprehension of heavenly things and its unjust depre- 
ciation of earthly things, was a proper result of the in- 
tellectual and spiritual struggles, the antagonisms, the 
perils, and the persecutions of the times. But he more 
than any other man consolidated the elements of that 
character, gave it a definite expression, and so provided 
for its permanent and increased efficiency. Whether, 
on the whole, this influence was for man's final good ; 
whether this organized Protestant crusade against free 
inquiry was a benefit to humanity; or whether it had 
been better that these great questions, from which 
man cannot forever shrink, had been then and there 
pursued to their legitimate conclusions, — are idle 
questions which every one will answer according to 
his private prejudices. This point alone is settled, that 
among the mightiest of the forces which have affected 
modern history Calvin takes his place. 

The hour was at hand which must come alike to the 
strong and the weak. His constitution, never vigorous, 
had been sapped in early life by devotion to study ; in 
later life by the manifold labors and the fierce conflicts 
amid which his maturer years were spent. In 1561 he 
was forced to sit while preaching. In 1564 this weak- 



360 JOHN CALVIN. 

ness had so increased, that on the 6th of February he 
preached his last discourse. But he gave himself no 
rest, persisting to the end, against every remonstrance, 
in dictating to an amanuensis, saying, "Would you 
have the Lord find me idle ? " On the 27th of March 
he was carried to the council chamber, and with bared 
head and faltering voice thanked them for all their 
favors, saying, "I feel this is the last time I shall 
appear in this place." Yet he lingered another month, 
and on the 28th of April, with unwonted tenderness, 
gave his last charges to his fellow laborers. His suf- 
ferings, still prolonged, though acute and agonizing, 
he bore with uncomplaining fortitude, only at intervals 
lifting his eyes to heaven, and murmuring, "How long, 
O Lord ? " On the 2Tth of May peacefully he resigned 
his soul to that God to whose service, with stern and 
awful sincerity, he had given his best strength. 

It is plain to see what constituted the groundwork 
of his character. He had a dogmatic rather than a 
catholic nature. He had none of that tendency which 
deliberates long, and determines only when every side 
has been duly examined, every point considered, and 
every difficulty weighed. Espousing the opinions which 
his prejudices or reason recommended, he applied to 
their defence all the resources of an affluent learning 
and an acute and powerful logic, until his ideas deep- 
ened into convictions rigid and unalterable, and a 
contrary opinion seemed not so much intellectual error 
as moral perversity; and when we add to this dogmatic 
mind a will despotic and remorseless, which would not 
spare himself, and which would not spare those who 
stood in his path, we have all we need to explain what 
is painful in his career. To his mind, his own ideas 
were but the earthly expressions of the Divine ideas ; 



JOHN CALVIN. 361 

and he who doubted or opposed them was wilfully blind 
or obstinately rebellious, and worthy of any severity of 
punishment. In reading the annals of his conflicts, one 
looks in vain for the marks of that doubt or hesitation 
or pity which in the hour of victory spares the van- 
quished foe. Nor did he spare himself. Called as he 
felt himself to be by a voice from heaven to do God's 
work, he abandoned his legal studies just as they 
promised their highest rewards. With a frail body, 
full of disease and anguish, he undertook superhuman 
labors. Sick or well, at home or in exile, in safety or 
in peril, he did his work. By his literary labors, 
enough for one life, by his correspondence, so wide that 
it seemed a sufficient task for one mind, by his weighty 
counsels and arguments at the solemn deliberations of 
the Reformers, by his heavy cares as head of the Church 
and adviser of the state, by his manifold parochial 
labors and his incessant preaching of the word, he 
proved that, while granting no freedom to others, he 
asked for himself no rest. 

Of his mental resources there can be but one opinion. 
With a mind of wonderful fecundity, prompt, vigorous, 
acute and logical, and expanded by a varied culture, — 
with a style pointed, perspicuous, and weighty, equally 
good for attack or defence or illustration of a solemn 
theme, — he maintained the place of a great intellectual 
leader in an age profuse of great men. Cold and harsh, 
with a nature deficient in kindly sympathy, he inspires 
no sympathy in others. It is one of the most striking 
things about his history, that not one anecdote illustra- 
tive of his private and domestic life has been preserved ; 
nothing that lets you into the heart of the man, no 
glimpse of the inner genuine self. He had nothing of 
Luther's genial humor, his quaint rough talk and gush- 



362 JOHN CALVIN. 

ing affection ; no touching revelations of the foibles, 
doubts, struggles, triumphs, of a great but tried spirit, 
all warm from the throbbing heart. Nothing of this in 
Calvin. All hope and fear, all joy and anguish, are 
concealed behind the sober and formal drapery of 
public life. Yet perhaps we do him in this respect 
imperfect justice. Within a narrow circle of friendship 
he seems to have displayed warm and even tender feel- 
ings, and to have attached men to him. Beza, a man 
of large powers, cherished for him a respect which 
bordered on idolatry. And few things could be more 
touching than the sight of Farel in his old age, just 
trembling on the verge of the grave, insisting upon com- 
ing to Geneva to look once more into Calvin's face, and 
to grasp once more Calvin's hand. In some of his 
familiar letters, in his counsels to the erring, in his 
condolence with the suffering, there is found a grave 
sincerity. and honest kindness, revealing another aspect 
of his character which we regret that we are not per- 
mitted to contemplate more frequently. 

He was a man of godly sincerity ; a very stern man ; 
a man utterly regardless of what we call human rights ; 
a most unlovely man in some respects, but not a man 
devoted to selfish aims, as appears from his honorable 
poverty and stainless purity of life ; a man of great vir- 
tues and great faults, — faults which in part were the 
errors of the time, in part the excess of an austere 
nature and bodily disease, in part, too, springing from 
the frailties and passions of our common humanity ; a 
great man, whose power for good or evil was larger 
than belongs to ordinary manhood, and whose signature 
was written with an iron hand upon his age. As we 
gaze upon the features which art has preserved, — those 
features worn by disease, ploughed by thought and care, 



JOHN CALVIN. 363 

and on every lineament bearing the traces of an inflexi- 
ble will, if we cannot feel sympathy, we feel respect. 
We cannot call him saint, we cannot sympathize with 
the opinions for whose diffusion he labored, or approve 
the methods by which he sought to compel assent ; we 
must hope that his influence will continue to grow less 
in the future as in the past ; but while remembering his 
reverence toward God, his allegiance to conscience, his 
fidelity in labor, his moral purity, we can with the 
Church Universal rejoice in his virtues. 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

Printed in the Atlantic Monthly, October, 1865. 

ALL doubtless remember the story which is told 
of the witty Charles II. and the Royal Society : 
how one day the King brought to the attention of its 
members a most curious and inexplicable phenomenon, 
which he stated thus : " When you put a trout into a 
pail full of water, why does not the water overflow ? " 
The savants, naturally enough, were surprised, and sug- 
gested many wise, but fruitless explanations ; until at 
last one of their number, having no proper reverence 
for royalty in his heart, demanded that the experiment 
should actually be tried. Then, of course, it was proved 
that there was no phenomenon to be explained. The 
water overflowed fast enough. Indeed, it is chron- 
icled that the evolutions of this lively member of the 
piscatory tribe were so brisk, that the difficulty was the 
exact opposite of what was anticipated, namely, how to 
keep the water in. 

This story may be a pure fable, but the lesson it 
teaches is true and important. It illustrates forcibly 
the facility with which even wise men accept doubtful 
propositions, and then apply the whole power of their 
minds to explain them, and perhaps to defend tliem. 
Latterly, one hears constantly of the physical decay 
which threatens the American people, because of their 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 365 

unwise and disproportioned stimulation of the brain. 
It is assumed, almost as an axiom, that there is " a 
deficiency of physical health in America." Especially 
is it assumed tliat great mental progress, either of races 
or of individuals, has been generally purchased at the 
expense of the physical frame. Indeed, it is one of the 
questions of the day, how the saints, that is, tiiose de- 
voted to literary and professional pursuits, shall obtain 
good and serviceable bodies ; or, to widen the query, 
how the finest intellectual culture can exist side by side 
with the noblest physical development ; or, to bring 
this question into a form that shall touch us most 
sharply, how our boys and girls can obtain all needful 
knowledge and mental discipline, and yet keep full of 
graceful and buoyant vitality. 

What do we say to the theories and convictions which 
are underneath this language ? What answer shall we 
make to these questions ? What answer ought we to 
make ? Our first reply would be. We doubt the proposi- 
tion. We ask for the broad and firm basis of undoubted 
facts upon which it rests. And we enter an opposite 
plea. We affirm that the saints have as good bodies as 
other people, and that they always did have. We deny 
that they need to be patched up or watched over any 
more than their neighbors. They live as long and 
enjoy as much as the rest of mankind. They can 
endure as many hard buffets, and come out as tough 
and strong, as the veriest dolt whose intellectual bark 
foundered in the unsounded depths of his primer. The 
world's history through, the races which are best taught 
have the best endowment of health. Nay, in our own 
New England, with just such influences, physical, men- 
tal, and moral, as actually exist, there is no deteriora- 
tion in real vitality to weep over. 



3G6 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

We hold, then, on this subject very different opinions 
from those which prevail in many quarters. We believe 
in the essential healthfulness of literary culture, and in 
the invigorating power of sound knowledge. Emphati- 
cally do we believe that our common schools have been 
in the aggregate a positive physical benefit. We arc 
confident that just to the degree that the unseen force 
within a man receives its rightful development does 
vigorous life flow in every current that beats from heart 
to extremities. With entire respect for the opinions of 
others, even while we cannot concur with them, with a 
readiness to admit that the assertion of those opinions 
may have been indirectly beneficial, we wish to state the 
truth as it looks to us, to exhibit the facts which bear 
upon this subject in the shape and hue they have to our 
own minds, and to give the grounds of our conviction 
that a cultivated mind is the best friend and ally of the 
body. 

Would it not be singular if anything different were 
true ? You say, and you say rightly, that tlie best part 
of a man is his mind and soul, those spiritual elements 
which divide him from all the rest of the creation, ani- 
mate or inanimate, and make him lord and sovereign 
over them all. You say, and you say wisely, that the 
body, however strong and beautiful, is nothing, — that 
the senses, however keen and vigorous, are nothing, — 
that the outward glories, however much they may min- 
ister to sensual gratification, are nothing, — unless they 
all become the instruments for the upbuilding of the 
immortal part in man. But what a tremendous im- 
peachment of the wisdom or power of the Creator you 
arc bringing, if you assert that the development of this 
highest part, whether by its direct influence on the 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 367 

body, or indirectly by the habits of life which it creates, 
is destructive of all the rest, nay, self-destructive ! You 
may show that every opening bud in spring, and every 
joint, nerve, and muscle in every animate creature, is 
full of proofs of wise designs accomplishing their pur- 
poses, and it shall all count for less than nothing, if you 
can demonstrate that the mind, in its highest, broadest 
development, brings anarchy into the system, — or, mark 
it well, produces, or tends to produce, habits of living 
ruinous to health, and so ruinous to true usefulness. 
At the outset, therefore, the very fact that the mind is 
the highest creation of Divine wisdom would force us to 
believe that that development of it, that increase of 
knowledge, that sharpening of the faculties, that feed- 
ing of intellectual hunger, which does not promote joy 
and health in every part, must be false and illegitimate 
indeed. 

And it is hardly too much to say, that, in a rational 
being, thought is almost synonymous with vitality of 
all sorts. The brain throws out its network of nerves 
to every part of the body ; and those nerves are the 
pathways along which it sends, not alone physical voli- 
tions, but its mental force and high intelligence, to 
mingle by a subtile chemistry with every fibre, and give 
it a finer life and a more bounding elasticity. So one 
might foretell, before the study of a single fact of expe- 
rience, that, other things being equal, he who had few 
or no thoughts would have not only a dormant mind, 
but also a sluggish and inert body, less active than 
another, less enduring, and especially less defiant of 
physical ills. And one might prophesy, too, that he 
who had high thoughts and wealth of knowledge would 
have stored up in his brain a magazine of reserved power 
wherewith to support the faltering body ; a prophecy 



8G8 SAINTS WHO HAVE H^\J) BODIES. 

not wide apart, perhaps, from any broad and candid 
observation of human life. 

And who can fail to remember what superior re- 
sources a cultivated mind has over one sunk in sloth 
and ignorance, — how much wider an outlook, how 
much larger and more varied interests, and how these 
things support when outward props fail, how they 
strengthen in misfortune and pain, and keep the heart 
from anxieties which might wear out the body ? Scott, 
dictating "Ivanhoe" in the midst of a torturing sick- 
ness, and so rising, by force of a cultivated imagination, 
above all physical anguish, to revel in visions of chival- 
ric splendor, is but the type of men everywhere, who, 
but for resources supplied by the mind, would have sunk 
beneath the blows of adverse fortune, or else sought 
forgetfulness in brutalizing and destructive pleasures. 
Sometimes a book is better far than medicine, and more 
truly soothing than the best anodyne. Sometimes a 
rich-freighted memory is more genial than many com- 
panions. Sometimes a firm mind, that has all it needs 
within itself, is a watchtower to which we may flee, and 
from which look down calmly upon our own losses and 
misfortunes. He who does not understand this has 
either had a most fortunate experience, or else has no 
culture, which is really a part of himself, woven into 
the very texture of the soul. So, if there were no facts, 
considering the mind, and who made it, and how it is re- 
lated to the body, and how, when it is a good mind and a 
well stored mind, it seems to stand for all else, to be food 
and shelter and comfort and friend and hope, who could 
believe anything else than that a well instructed soul 
could do naught but good to its servant the body ? 

After all, we cannot evade, and we ought not to seek 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 369 

to evade, the testimony of facts. No cause can properly 
stand on any theory, however pleasant and cheering, or 
however plausible. What, then, of the facts, of the 
painful facts of experience, which are said to tell so 
different a tale ? This, — that the physical value of 
education is in no way so clearly demonstrated as by 
these very facts. "We know what is the traditional pic- 
ture of the scholar, — pale, stooping, hectic, hurrying 
with unsteady feet to a predestined early grave ; or else 
morbid, dyspeptic, cadaverous, putting into his works 
the dark tints of his own inward nature. At best, he is 
painted as a mere bookworm, bleached and almost mil- 
dewed in some learned retirement beneath the shadow 
of great folios, until he is out of joint with the world, 
and all fresh and hearty life has gone out of him. Who 
cannot recall just such pictures, wherein one knows not 
which predominates, the ludicrous or the pitiful ? We 
protest against them all. In the name of truth and 
common sense alike, we indignantly reject them. We 
have a vision of a sturdier manhood : of the genial, open 
countenance of an Irving ; of the homely, honest strength 
that shone in every feature of a Walter Scott ; of the 
massive vigor of a Goethe or a Humboldt. How much, 
too, is said of the physical degeneracy of our own peo- 
ple, — how the jaw is retreating, how the frame is grow- 
ing slender and gaunt, how the chest flattens, and how 
tenderly we ought to cherish every octogenarian among 
us, for that we are seeing the last of them ! If this is 
intended to be a piece of pleasant badinage, far be it 
from us to arrest a single smile it may awaken. But if 
it is given as a serious description, from which serious 
deductions can be drawn, then we say, that, as a delinea- 
tion, it is, to a considerable extent, purely fanciful, — 
as an argument, utterly so. The facts, so far as they 



370 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

are ascertained, point unwaveringly to this conclusion, 
— that every advance of a people in knowledge and re- 
finement is accompanied by as striking an advance in 
health and strength. 

Try this question, if you please, on the largest possi- 
ble scale. Compare the uneducated savage with his 
civilized brother. His form has never been bent by con- 
finement in the school-room. Overburdening thoughts 
have never wasted his frame. And if unremitting 
exercise amid the free airs of heaven will alone make 
one strong, then he will be strong. Is the savage 
stronger ? Does he live more years ? Can he compete 
side by side with civilized races in the struggle for 
existence ? Just the opposite is true. Our puny boys, 
as we sometimes call them, in our colleges, will weigh 
more, lift more, endure more than any barbarian race 
of them all. This day the gentle Sandwich Islanders 
are wasting like snow-wreaths, in contact with educated 
races. This day our red men are being swept before 
advancing civilization like leaves before the breath of 
the hurricane. And it requires no prophet's eye to see, 
that, if we do not give the black man education as well 
as freedom, an unshackled mind as well as unshackled 
limbs, he too will share the same fate. 

To all this it may naturally be objected, that the 
reason so many savage races do not display the greatest 
physical stamina is not so much intellectual barrenness 
as their vices, native or acquired, — or because they 
bring no wisdom to the conduct of life, but dwell in 
smoky huts, eat unhealthy food, go from starvation to 
plethora and from plethora to starvation again, exchange 
the indolent lethargy which is the law of savage life for 
the frantic struggles of war or the chase which diversify 
and break up its monotony. Allow tlie objection ; and 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 371 

then what have we accomplished, but carrying the argu- 
ment one step hack ? For what are self-control and 
self-care but the just fruits of intelligence ? But in 
truth it is a combination of all these influences, and not 
any of them alone, that enables the civilized man to out- 
live and outrival his barbarian brother. He succeeds, 
not simply because of the superior address and sagacity 
which education gives him, though that, no doubt, has 
much to do with it ; not altogether because his habits 
of life are better, though we would not underrate their 
value ; but equally because the culture of the brain gives 
a finer life to every red drop in his arteries, and greater 
hardihood to every fibre which is woven into his flesh. 
If it is not so, how do you explain the fact that our 
colored soldier, fighting in his native climate, with the 
same exposure in health and the same care in sickness, 
succumbs to wounds and diseases over which his white 
comrade triumphs ? Or how will you explain analogous 
facts in the history of disease among other uneducated 
races ? Our explanation is simple. As the slightest 
interfusion of carbon may change the dull iron into 
trenchant steel, so intelligence working through invisi- 
ble channels may add a new temper to the physical 
nature. And thus it may be strictly true that it is not 
only the mind and soul which slavery and ignorance 
wrong, but the body just as much. 

It may be said, and perhaps justly, that a comparison 
between races so unlike is not a fair comparison. Take, 
then, if you prefer, the intelligent and unintelligent 
periods in the history of the same race. The old 
knights ! Those men with mail-clad bodies and iron 
natures, who stand out in imagination as symbols of 
masculine strength ! The old knights ! They were not 



372 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

scholars. Their constitutions were not ruined by study, 
or by superfluous sainthood of any kind. They were 
more at home with the sword than the pen. They 
loved better " to hear the lark sing than the mouse 
squeak." So their minds were sufficiently dormant. 
How was it with their bodies ? Were they sturdier 
men ? Did they stand heavier on their feet than their 
descendants ? It is a familiar fact that the armor which 
enclosed them will not hold those whom we call their 
degenerate children. A friend tells me that in the 
armory of London Tower there are preserved scores, if 
not hundreds, of the swords of those terrible Northmen, 
those Vikings, who, ten centuries ago, swept the seas 
and were the dread of all Europe, and that scarcely one 
of them has a hilt large enough to be grasped by a man 
of this generation. Of races who have left behind them 
no methodical records, and whose story is preserved 
only in the rude rhymes of their poets and ruder chroni- 
cles, it is not safe to make positive affirmations ; but all 
the indications are that the student of to-day is a larger 
and stronger man than the warrior of the Middle Ages. 

If we come down to periods of historical certainty, no 
one will doubt that the England of the present hour is 
more educated than the England of fifty years ago, or 
that the England of fifty years since had a broader diffu- 
sion of intelligence than the England of a century pre- 
vious. Yet that very intelligence has prolonged life. 
An Englishman lives longer to-day than he did in 1800, 
and longer yet than in 1700. Here is a curious proof. 
Annuities calculated on a certain rate of life in 1694 
would yield a fortune to those who issued them. Calcu- 
lated at the same rate in 1794, they would ruin them ; 
for the more general diffusion of knowledge and refine- 
ment had added, I am not able to say how many years 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 373 

to the average British life. Observe how this statement 
is confirmed by some wonderful statistics preserved at 
Geneva. From 1600 to 1700 the average length of life 
in that city was 13 years 3 months. From 1700 to 1750 
it was 27 years 9 months. From 1750 to 1800, 31 years 
3 months. From 1800 to 1833, 43 years 6 months. 

One more pertinent fact. Take in England any num- 
ber of families you please, whose parents can read and 
write, and an equal number of families whose parents 
cannot read and write, and the number of children in 
the latter class of families who will die before the age 
of five years will greatly exceed that in the former class, 
— some thirty or forty per cent. So surely does a 
thoughtful ordering of life come in the train of intelli- 
gence. If faith is to be placed in statistics of any sort, 
then it holds true in foreign countries that liuman life 
is long in proportion to the degree that knowledge, 
refinement, and virtue are diffused. That is, sainthood, 
so far from destroying the body, preserves it. 

1 anticipate the objection which may be made to our 
last argument. Abroad, we are told, there is such an 
element of healthy, outdoor life, that any ill effects 
which might naturally follow in the train of general 
education are neutralized. Abroad, too, education with 
the masses is elementary, and advances also with more 
moderation than with us. Abroad, moreover, the whole 
social being is not pervaded with the intense intellectual 
activity and fervor which are so characteristic especially 
of New England life. 

Come home, then, to our own Massachusetts, which, 
as some will have it, is school-mad. What do you find ? 
Here, in a climate proverbially changeable and rigor- 
ous, — here, where mental and moral excitements rise 



374 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

to fever heat, — here, where churches adorn every land- 
scape, and school-houses greet us at every corner, and 
lyceums are established in every village, — here, where 
newspapers circulate by the hundred thousand, and 
magazines for our old folks, and " Our Young Folks," 
too, reach fifty thousand, — here, in Massachusetts, 
health is at its climax : greater and more enduring than 
in bonnie England, or vine-clad France, or sunny Italy. 
I read some statistics the other day, and I have ever 
since had a greater respect for the land of " east winds 
and salt fish and school-houses," as scandalous people 
have termed Massachusetts. What do these statistics 
say ? That, while in England the deaths reach annually 
2.21 per cent of the whole population, and in France 
2.36 per cent, and in Italy 2.94 per cent, and in Austria 
3.31: per cent, in Massachusetts the deaths are only 1.82 
per cent annually. Even in Boston, with its large pro- 
portion of foreign elements, the percentage of deaths is 
only 2.35. It may be said, in criticism of these state- 
ments, that in our country statistics arc not kept with 
sufficient accuracy to furnish correct data. However 
this may be in our rural districts, it certainly is not 
true of the metropolis. The figures are not at hand, 
but they exist, and they prove conclusively that those 
wards in Boston which have a population most purely 
native reach a salubrity unexcelled. So that, with all 
the real drawbacks of climate, and the pretended draw- 
backs of unnatural or excessive mental stimulus, the 
health here is absolutely unequalled by that of any 
country in Europe. Certainly, if the mental and moral 
sainthood which we have does not build up the body, it 
cannot be said that it does any injury to it. 

Have we noted what a splendid testimony the war 
which has just closed has given to the physical results 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 375 

of our educational training ? A hundred or a thousand 
young men taken from our New England villages and 
put into the ranks of our army — young men who 
learned the alphabet at four, who all through boyhood 
had the advantages of our common school system, who 
had felt to the full the excitement of the intellectual life 
about them — have stood taller, weighed heavier, fought 
more bravely and intelligently, won victory out of more 
adverse circumstances, and, what is more to the point, 
endured more hardship with less sickness, than a like 
number of any other race on earth. We care not where 
you look for comparison, whether to Britain, or to France, 
or to Russia, where the spelling-book has almost been 
tabooed, or to Spain, where in times past the capacity 
to read the Bible was scarcely less than rank heresy, 
at least for the common people. This war has been 
brought to a successful issue by the best educated army 
that ever fought on battle-field, or, as the new book has 
it, by " the thinking bayonet," by men whose physical 
manhood has received no detriment from their intel- 
lectual culture. 

These assertions are founded upon statistics which 
have been preserved of regiments whose members were 
almost exclusively native born. And the results are 
certainly in accordance with all candid observation. It 
may, indeed, be said that the better health of our army 
has been after all the resalt of the better care which the 
soldier has taken of himself. We answer, the better 
care was the product of his education. It may be said, 
again, that this health was owing in a great measure to 
the superior watchfulness exercised over the soldier by 
others, by the government, by the Sanitary Commission, 
and by State agencies. Then we reply, that this tender- 
ness of the soldier, if tenderness it be, and this sagacity, 



376 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

if sagacity prompted the care, were both the oflFspring 
of that liigh intelligence which is the proper result of 
popular education. 

There is but one possible mode of escape from such 
testimony. This whole train of argument is inconclusive, 
it may be asserted, because what is maintained is not 
that intellectual culture is unhealthful, where it is woven 
into the web of active life, but only where the pursuit 
of knowledge is one's business. It may be readily al- 
lowed, that, where the whole nature is kept alive by the 
breath of outward enterprise, when the great waves of 
this world's excitements are permitted to roll with 
purifying tides into the inmost recesses of the soul, the 
results of mental culture may be modified. But w^iat of 
the saints ? What of the literary men par excellence ? 

Ah ! if you restrain us to that line of inquiry, the 
argument will be trebly strong, and the facts grow over- 
whelmingly pertinent and conclusive. Will you examine 
the careful registry of deaths in Massachusetts which 
has been kept the last twenty years ? It will inform 
you that the classes whose average of life is high up, 
almost the highest up, are with us the classes that work 
with the brain, — the judges, the lawyers, the physicians, 
the clergymen, the professors in our colleges. The very 
exception to this statement rather confirms than con- 
tradicts our general position, that intellectual culture 
is absolutely invigorating. The cultivators of the soil 
live longest. But note that it is the educated, intelligent 
farmers, the farmers of Massachusetts, the farmers of 
a State of common schools, the farmers who link thought 
to labor, who live long. And doubtless, if they carried 
more thougiit into their labor, if they were more intelli- 
gent, if they were better educated, they would live yet 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 377 

longer. At any rate, in England the cultivators of her 
soil, her down-trodden peasantry, sluggish and unedu- 
cated, do not live out half their days. Very likely the 
farmer's lot, plus education and plus habits of mental 
activity, is the healthiest as it is the primal condition 
of man. Nevertheless, considering what is the general 
opinion, it is surprising how slight is the advantage 
which he has even then over the purely literary 
classes. 

Will you go to Harvard University and ascertain 
what becomes of her children ? Take up, then, Dr. 
Palmer's Necrology of the Alumni of Harvard from 
1851 to 1863. You will learn that, while the average 
age of all persons who in Massachusetts die after they 
have attained the period of twenty years is but fifty 
years, the average age of Harvard graduates who die in 
like manner, is fifty-eight years. Thus you have, in 
favor of the highest form of public education known 
in the State, a clear average of eight years. You may 
examine backward the Triennial Catalogue as far as 
you please, and you will not find the testimony essen- 
tially different. The statement will stand impregnable, 
that, from the time John Harvard founded our little 
College in the wilderness, to this hour, when it is fast 
becoming a great University, with its schools in every 
department, and its lectures covering the whole field of 
human knowledge, the graduates have always attained a 
longevity surpassing that of their generation. 

And you are to observe that this comparison is a 
strictly just comparison. We contrast not the whole 
community, old and young, with those who must neces- 
sarily have attained manhood before they are a class at 
all ; but adults with adults, graduates with those of 
other avocations who have arrived at the period of 



378 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

twenty years. Neither do we compare the bright and 
peculiar luminaries of Harvard with the mass of men, — 
though, in fact, it is well known that the best scholars 
live the most years, — but we compare the whole body 
of the graduates, bright and dull, studious and unstudi- 
ous, with the whole body of the community. 

To the array of evidence wiiich may be brought from 
all the registries of all the states and universities under 
heaven, some may triumphantly exclaim, " Statistics are 
unworthy of trust." " To lie like statistics," " false as 
a fact," these are the stalest of witticisms. But the 
objection to which they give point is practically frivolous. 
Grant that statistics are to a certain degree doubtful, 
are they not the most trustworthy evidence we have ? 
And in the question at issue, are they not the only 
evidence which has real force ? And allowing their 
general defectiveness, how shall we explain that, though 
gathered from all sides and by all kinds of people, they 
so uniformly favor education ? Why, if they must err, 
do they err so pertinaciously in one direction ? How 
does it happen that, summon as many witnesses as you 
please, and cross-question them as severely as you can, 
they never falter in this testimony, that, where intelli- 
gence abounds, there physical vigor does much more 
abound ? that, where education is broad and generous, 
there the years are many and happy ? 

If, therefore, facts can prove anything, it is that just 
such a condition of life as that which is growing more and 
more general among us, and which our common school 
system directly fosters, where every man is becoming an 
educated man, — where the farmer upon his acres, the 
merchant at his desk, and the meclianic in his shop, no 
less than the scholar poring over his books, shall be in the 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 379 

truest sense educated, — that such a condition is the one 
of all others which promotes habits of thought and action, 
an elasticity of temper and a breadth of vision and inter- 
est most conducive to health and vigor. It is the fashion 
to talk of the appearance of superior robustness so char- 
acteristic of our English brethren. But we suspect that 
in this case, too, appearances are deceitful. That cli- 
mate may produce in us a restless energy inconsistent 
with rounded forms and rosy cheeks we freely allow. 
But in strength and real endurance the New England 
constitution will yield to none. And the stern logic of 
facts shows beyond a peradventure that here there are 
no influences, climatic or intellectual, which war with 
longevity. What may be hidden in the future, what 
results may come from a still wider diffusion of educa- 
tion, we cannot tell, but hitherto nothing but good has 
come of ever increasing knowledge. 

We hasten now to inquire concerning the health and 
years of special classes of literary men : not, indeed, to 
prove that there is no real war between the mind and 
the body, — for we consider that point to be already 
demonstrated, — but rather to show that we need shrink 
from no field of inquiry, and that from every fresh field 
will come new evidence of the substantial truth of our 
position. 

We have taken the trouble to ascertain the average 
age of all the English poets of whom Johnson wrote 
lives, some fifty or sixty in all. Here are great men 
and small men, men with immortal names and men 
whose names were long since forgotten, men of good 
habits and men whose habits would undermine any con- 
stitution, flourishing too in a period when human life 
was certainly far shorter in England than now. And 



380 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

how long did they live ? What do you think ? Thirty, 
forty years ? No ; they endured their sainthood, or 
their want of it, for the comfortable period of fifty-six 
years. Nor is the case a particle different, if you take 
only the great and memorable names of English poetry. 
Chaucer, living at the dawn almost of English civiliza- 
tion ; Shakespeare, whose varied and marvellous dramas 
might well have exhausted any vitality ; Milton, strug- 
gling with domestic infelicity, with political hatred, and 
with blindness ; Dryden, Pope, Swift : none of these 
burning and shining lights of English literature went 
out at midday. The result is not altered if you come 
nearer our own time. That galaxy of talent and genius 
which shone with such brilliancy in the Scottish capital 
at the beginning of the century, — Sydney Smith, Lord 
Jeffrey, Christopher North, Macaulay, Mackintosh, De 
Quincey, Brougham, — all these, with scarcely an excep- 
tion, have lived far beyond the average of numan life. 
So was it with the great poets and romancers of that 
period. Wordsworth, living the life of a recluse near 
the beautiful lakes of Westmoreland, lasted to fourscore. 
Southey, after a life of unparalleled literary industry, 
broke down at sixty-six. Coleridge, with habits which 
ought to have destroyed him early, lingered till sixty- 
two. Scott, struggling to throw off a mountain load of 
debt, endured superhuman labor till more than sixty. 
Even Byron and Burns, who did not live as men who 
desired length of days, died scarcely sooner than their 
generation. 

You are not willing, perhaps, to test this question by 
the longevity of purely literary men. You ask what can 
be said about the great preachers. You have always 
heard, that, while the ministers were, no doubt, men 
of excellent intentions and much sound learning, what 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 381 

with their morbid notions of life, and what with the 
weight of a rather heavy sort of erudition, they were 
saints with the very poorest kind of bodies. Just the 
contrary. No class lives longer. We once made out 
a list of the thirty most remarkable preachers of the 
last four centuries that we could call to mind. Of 
the age to which most of these attained we had at the 
outset no idea whatever. In that list were included 
the men who must figure in every candid account of 
preaching. The great men of the Reformation, Luther, 
Melanclitlion, Calvin, Beza, Knox, were there. That re- 
splendent group which adorned the seventeenth century, 
and whose names are synonyms for pulpit eloquence, 
Barrow, South, Jeremy Taylor, and Tillotson, were 
prominent in it. The milder lights of the last century, 
Paley, Blair, Robertson, Priestley, were not forgotten. 
The Catholics were represented by Massillon, Bossuet, 
Bourdaloue, and Fenelon. The Protestants as truly, by 
Robert Hail and Chalmers, by Wesley and Channing. 
In short, it was a thoroughly fair list. We then pro- 
ceeded to ascertain the average life of those included in 
it. It was just sixty-nine years. And we invite all 
persons who are wedded to the notion that the saints 
are always knights of the broken body, to take pen 
and paper and jot down the name of every remarkable 
preacher since the year 1500 that they can recall, and 
add, if they wish, every man in their own vicinity who 
has risen in learning and talent above the mass of his 
profession. We will insure the result without any pre- 
mium. They will produce a list that would delight the 
heart of a provident director of a life insurance com- 
pany. And their average will come as near the old 
Scripture pattern of threescore years and ten as that of 
any body of men who have lived since the days of Isaac 
and Jacob. 



382 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

If now any one has a lurking doubt of the physical 
value of an active and well-stored mind, let him pass 
from the preachers to the statesmen, from the men who 
teach the wisdom of the world to come to the men who 
administer the things of tliis world. Let him begin with 
the grand names of the Long Parliament, — Hampden, 
Pym, Vane, Cromwell, — and then gather up all the 
great administrators of the next two centuries, down to 
the octogenarians who are now foremost in the conduct 
of British affairs ; and if he wishes to widen his observa- 
tion, let him pass over the Channel to the Continent, 
and in France recall such names as Sully and Richelieu, 
Mazarin and Colbert, Talleyrand and Guizot ; in Austria, 
Kaunitz and Metternich. And when he has made his 
list as broad, as inclusive of all really great statesman- 
ship everywhere as he can, find his average ; and if he 
can bring it much beneath seventy, he will be more for- 
tunate than we were when we tried the experiment. 

Do not by any means omit the men of science. There 
are the astronomers. If any employment would seem 
to draw a man up to heaven, it would be this. Yet, of 
all men, astronomers apparently have had the most 
wedded attachment to earth. Galileo, Xewton, La 
Place, rierschel, — these are the royal names, the fixed 
stars, set, as it were, in that very firmament which for 
so many years they searched with telescopic eye. And 
yet neither of them lived less than seventy-eight years. 
As for the men of natural science, .it looks as though 
they were spared by some Providential provision, in or- 
der that they might observe and report for long epochs 
the changes of this old earth of ours. Cuvier dying 
at seventy-five, Sir Joseph Banks at seventy-seven, Buffon 
at eighty-one, Blumenbach at eighty-eight, and Humboldt 
at fourscore and ten, are some of the cases which make 
such a supposition altogether reasonable. 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 383 

Cross the ocean, and you will find the same testimony, 
that mental culture is absolutely favorable to physical 
endurance. The greatest men in our nation's history, 
whether in walks of statesmanship, science, or literature, 
almost without exception, have lived long. Franklin, 
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, the elder Adams, and 
Patrick Henry, in earlier periods, — the younger Adams, 
Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Choate, and Everett, Irving, 
Prescott, Cooper, and Hawthorne, in later times, — are 
cases in point. These men did not die prematurely. 
They grew strong by the toil of the brain. And to-day 
the quartette of our truest poets — Bryant, Whittier, 
Longfellow, and Holmes — are with us in the hale years 
of a green age, never singing sweeter songs, never harp- 
ing more inspiring strains. Long may our ears hear' 
their melodies ! 

If now we could enter the walks of private life, and 
study widely the experience of individual men, we should 
have an interesting record indeed, and a manifold and 
wellnigh irresistible testimony. Consider a few remark- 
able, yet widely differing cases. 

Who can read attentively the life of John Wesley, 
and not exclaim, if varied and exhausting labor, if 
perpetual excitement and constant drafts upon the brain, 
would ever wear a man out, he would have worn out ? 
It was his creative energy that called into existence 
a denomination, his ardent piety that inspired it, his 
clear mind that legislated for it, his heroic industry 
that did no mean part of the incessant daily toil needful 
for its establishment. Yet this man of many labors, 
who through a long life never knew practically the mean- 
ing of the word leisure^ says, at seventy-two, " How is it 
that I find the same strength that I did thirty years ago, 



384 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

that my nerves are firmer, that I have none of the 
infirmities of old age, and have lost several that I had in 
youth ? " And ten years later, he devoutly records, " Is 
anything too hard for God ? It is now eleven years 
since I have felt such a thing as weariness." And he 
continued till eighty-eight in full possession of his 
faculties, laboring with body and mind alike to within a 
week of his death. 

Joseph Priestley was certainly a very different man, 
but scarcely less remarkable. No mean student in all 
branches of literature, a metaphysician, a theologian, a 
man of science, he began life with a feeble frame, and 
ended a hearty old age at seventy-one. He himself 
declares at fifty-four, that, " so far from suffering from 
application to study, I have found my health steadily 
improve from the age of eighteen to the present time." 

You would scarcely find a life more widely divided 
from these than that of Washington Irving. Neverthe- 
less, it is like them in one respect, that it bears emphatic 
testimony to the real healthfulness of mental exertion. 
He was the feeblest of striplings at eighteen. At nine- 
teen. Judge Kent said, " He is not long for this world." 
His friends sent him abroad at twenty-one, to see if a 
sea voyage would not husband his strength. So pale, 
so broken, was he, that, when he stepped on board the 
ship, the captain whispered, " There is a chap who will 
be overboard before we are across ! " Irving had too 
his share of misfortunes, — failure in business, loss of 
investments, in earlier life some anxiety as to the ways 
and means of support. Even his habits of study were 
hardly what the highest wisdom would direct. While 
he was always genial and social, and at times easy 
almost to indolence, when the mood seized him he 
would write incessantly for weeks and even for months, 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 385 

sometimes fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen hours in a day. 
But he grew robust for half a century, and writes, at 
seventj-five, that he has now " a streak of old age." 

The example of some of those who are said to have 
been worn out by intense mental application furnishes 
perhaps the most convincing proof of all that no reason- 
able activity of the mind ever warred with the best 
health of the body. Walter Scott, we are told, wore out. 
And very likely, to a certain extent, the statement is 
true. But what had he not accomplished before he wore 
out ? He had astonished the world with that wonderful 
series of romances which place him scarcely second to 
any name in English literature. He had sung those 
border legends which delighted the ears of his genera- 
tion. He had produced histories which show that, had 
he chosen, he might have been as much a master in the 
region of historic fact as in the realm of imagination. 
He had edited other men's works ; he had Avritten essays ; 
he had lent himself with a royal generosity to every 
one who asked his time or influence ; and when, almost 
an old man, commerical bankruptcy overtook him, and 
he sought to lift the mountain of his debt by pure 
intellectual toil, he wore out. But declining years, dis- 
appointed hopes, desperate exertions, may wear anybody 
out. He wore out, but it was at more than threescore 
years, when nine tenths of his generation had long slept 
in quiet graves, — when the crowd of the thoughtless 
and indolent, who began life with him, had rusted out 
in inglorious repose. Yes, Walter Scott wore out, if you 
call tliat wearing out. 

John Calvin, all his biographers say, wore out. Per- 
haps so ; — but not without a prolonged resistance. 
Commencing life with the frailest constitution, he was 



386 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

as early as twentj-five a model of erudition, and had 
already written his immortal work. For thirty years 
he was in the heat and ferment of a great religious 
revolution. For thirty years he was one of the con- 
trolling minds of his age. For thirty years he was 
the sternest soldier in the Church Militant, bearing 
down stubborn resistance by a yet more stubborn will. 
For thirty years neither his brain nor his pen knew 
rest. And so at fifty-six this man of broken body 
and many labors laid down the weapons of his war. 
fare ; but it was at Geneva, where the public registers 
tell us that the average of human life in that century 
was only nine years. 

One writes words like these : " John Kitto died, and 
his death was the judgment for overwork, and over- 
work of a single organ, — the brain." And who was 
John Kitto ? A poor boy, the son of a drunken father, 
subject from infancy to agonizing headache. An un- 
fortunate lad, who at thirteen fell from a scaffolding 
and was taken up for dead, and escaped only with total 
deafness and a supposed permanent injury to the brain. 
A hapless apprentice, who suffered at the hands of a 
cruel taskmaster all that brutality and drunken fury 
could suggest. A youth thirsting for knowledge, but 
able to obtain it only by the hardest ways, peering into 
booksellers' windows, reading at book-stalls, purchasing 
cheap books with pennies stained all over with the sweat 
of his toil. An heroic student, who labored for more 
than twenty years with almost unparalleled industry, 
and with an equally unparalleled neglect of the laws of 
health ; of whom it is scarcely too much to say literally, 
that he knew no change but from his desk to his bed, 
and from his bed to his desk again. A voluminous 
writer, who, if he produced no work of positive genius. 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 387 

has done more than any other man to ilhistrate the 
Scriptures, and to make famiUar and vivid the scenery, 
the life, the geography, and the natural history of the 
Holy Land. And he died in the harness, — but not so 
very early, — at fifty. And we say that he would have 
lived much longer, had he given his constitution a fair 
chance. But when we remember his passionate fond- 
ness for books, how they compensated him for the want 
of wealth, comforts, and the pleasant voices of wife and 
children that he could not hear, we grow doubtful. And 
we hear him exclaim almost in rhapsody : " If I were 
blind as well as deaf, in what a wretched situation should 
I be ! If I could not read, how deplorable would be my 
condition ! What earthly pleasure equal to the read- 
ing of a good book ? dearest tomes ! O princely and 
august folios ! to obtain you, I would work night and 
day, and forbid myself every sensual joy ! " When we 
behold the forlorn man, shut out by his misfortune from 
so many resources, and finding more than recompense 
for this privation within the four walls of his library, 
we are tempted to say. No, he would not have lived as 
long ; had he studied less, he would have remembered 
his griefs more. 

Of course it is easy to take exception to all evidence 
drawn from the life and experience of individual men, 
— natural to say that one must needs be somewhat old 
before he can acquire a great name at all, and that our 
estimate considers those alone to whom mere prolong- 
ation of days has given reputation, and forgets the 
village Hampdens, the mute, inglorious Miltons, the 
unrecorded Newtons, the voiceless orators, sages, or 
saints who have died and made no sign. To this the 
simple reply is, that individual cases, however numerous 



388 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

but only to illustrate and confirm one which general 
data have already demonstrated. Grant the full force 
of every criticism, and then it remains true that the 
widest record of literary life exhibits no tendency of 
mental culture to shorten human life, or to create habits 
which would shorten it. Indeed, we do not know 
where to look for any broad range of facts which would 
indicate that education here or anywhere else has 
decreased or is likely to decrease health. And were it 
not for the respect which we cherish towards those who 
hold it, we should say that such a position was as nearly 
pure theory, or prejudice, or opinion founded on frag- 
mentary data, as any view well could be. 

But do you mean to assert that there is no such thing 
as intellectual excess ? that intellectual activity never 
injures ? that unremitting attention to mental pursuits, 
with an entire abstinence from proper exercise and 
recreation, is positively invigorating ? that robbing the 
body of sleep, and bending it sixteen or eighteen hours 
over the desk, is the best way to build it up in grace and 
strength ? Of course no one would say any such absurd 
things. There is a right and wrong use of everything. 
Any part of the system will wear out with excessive use. 
Overwork kills, but certainly not any quicker when it is 
overwork of the mind than when it is overwork of the 
body. Overwork in the study is just as healthful as 
overwork on the farm, or at the ledger, or in the smoky 
shop, toiling and moiling, with no rest and no quicken- 
ing thoughts. Especially is it true that education does 
not peculiarly tempt a man to excess. 

But are you ready to maintain that there is no ele- 
ment of excess infused into our common school system ? 
Certainly. Most emphatically there is not. What, 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 389 

then, is there to put over against these terrible state- 
ments of excessive labor of sis or seven hours a day, 
under which young brains are reeling and young spines 
are bending until there are no rosy-cheeked urchins and 
blooming maids left among us ? The inexorable logic of 
facts. The public schools of Massachusetts were taught 
in the years 1863 and 1864 on an average just thirty- 
two weeks, just five days in a week, and, making proper 
allowance for recesses and opening exercises, just five 
and a quarter hours in a day. Granting now that all the 
boys and girls studied during these hours faithfully, you 
have an average for the three hundred and thirteen work- 
ing days of the year of two hours and forty-one minutes 
a day, — an amount of study that never injured any 
healthy child. But, going back a little to youthful 
recollections, and considering the amazing proclivity of 
the young mind to idleness, whispering, and fun and 
frolic in general, it seems doubtful whether our children 
ever yet attained to so high an average of actual study as 
two hours a day. As a modification of this statement, 
it may be granted that in the cities and larger towns 
the school term reaches forty weeks in a year. If you 
add one hour as the average amount of study at home 
given by pupils of over twelve years, (and the allowance 
is certainly ample,) you have four hours as the utmost 
period ever given by any considerable class of children. 
That there is excess we freely admit. That there are 
easy committee-men who permit too high a pressure, 
and infatuated teachers who insist upon it, that there 
are ambitious children whom nobody can stop, and silly 
parents who fondly wish to see their children mon- 
strosities of brightness, lisping Latin and Greek in 
their cradles, respiring mathematics as they would the 
atmosphere, and bristling all over with facts of natural 



390 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

science like porcupines, till every bit of childhood is 
worked out of them, — that such things are, we are not 
inclined to deny. But they are rare exceptions, — no 
more a part of the system than white crows are proper 
representatives of the dusky and cawing brotherhood. 

Or yet again, do we mean to assert that no attention 
need be given to the formation of right physical habits ? 
or that bodily exercise ought not to be joined to mental 
toils ? or that the walk in the woods, the row upon the 
quiet river, the stroll with rod in hand by the babbling 
brook, or with gun on shoulder over the green prairies, 
or the skating in the crisp December air on the glisten- 
ing lake, ought to be discouraged ? Do we speak dis- 
respectfully of dumb-bells and clubs and parallel bars, 
and all the paraphernalia of the gymnasium ? Are we 
aggrieved at the mention of boxing-gloves or single- 
stick or foils ? Would it shock our nervous sensibilities 
if our next door neighbor the philosopher, or some near- 
by grave and reverend doctor of divinity, or even the 
learned judge himself, should give unmistakable evi- 
dence that he had in his body the two hundred and odd 
bones and the five hundred and more muscles, witli all 
their fit accompaniments of joints and sinews, of which 
the anatomists tell us ? Not at all. Far from it. We 
exercise, no doubt, too little. We know of God's fair 
world too much by description, too little by the sight of 
our own eyes. Welcome anything which leads us out 
into this goodly and glorious universe ! Welcome all 
that tends to give the human frame higher grace and 
symmetry ! Welcome the gymnastics, too, heavy or 
light either, if they will guide us to a more harmonious 
physical development. 

We ourselves own a set of heavy Indian clubs, of 
middling Indian clubs, and of light Indian clubs. We 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 391 

have iron dumb-bells and wooden dumb-bells. We 
recollect with considerable satisfaction a veritable bean- 
bag which did good service in the household until it 
unfortunately sprung a leak. In an amateur way we 
have tried both systems, and felt the better for them. 
"We have a dim remembrance of rowing sundry leagues, 
and even of dabbling with the rod and line. We always 
look with friendly eye upon the Harvard Gymnasium, 
whenever it looms up in actual or mental vision. Never 
yet could we get by an honest game of cricket or base- 
ball without losing some ten minutes in admiring con- 
templation. We bow with deep respect to Dr. Windship 
and his heavy weights. We bow, if anything, with a 
trifle more of cordiality to Dr. Lewis and his light 
weights. They both have our good word. We think 
that they would have our example, were it not for the 
fatal proclivity of solitary gymnastics to dulness. If 
we have not risen to the high degrees in this noble 
order of muscular Christians, we claim at least to be 
a humble craftsman and faithful brother. 

Speaking with all seriousness, we have no faith in 
mental activity purchased at the expense of physical 
sloth. It is well to introduce into the school, into the 
family, and into the neighborhood any movement 
system which will exercise all the muscles of the body. 
But the educated man is not any more likely to need 
this general physical development than anybody else. 
Establish your gymnasium in any village, and the 
farmer fresh from the plough, the mechanic from swing- 
ing the hammer or driving the plane, will be just as 
sure to find new muscles that he never dreamed of as 
the palest scholar of them all. And the diffusion of 
knowledge and refinement, so far from promoting inac- 
tivity and banishing recreations from life, directly feeds 



392 SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 

that craving for variety out of which healthful changes 
come, and awakens that noble curiosity which at fit 
seasons sends a man out to see how the wild-flower 
grows in the woods, how the green buds open in the 
spring, how the foliage takes on its painted autumn 
glory, which leads him to struggle through tangled 
thickets or through pathless woods that he may behold 
the brook laughing in cascade from rock to rock, or to 
breast the steep mountain that he may behold from a 
higher outlook the wonders of the visible creation. 
Other things being equal, the educated man in any 
vocation is quite as likely as another to be active, quick 
in every motion, and free in every limb. 

But admit all that is claimed. Admit that increasing 
intelligence has changed the average of man's life from 
the twenty-five years of the seventeenth century to the 
thirty-five of the eighteenth or the forty-five years of 
the nineteenth century. Admit, too, that the best 
educated men of this generation will live five or ten 
years more than the least educated men. Ought we 
to be satisfied wdth things as they are? Should 
we not look for more than the forty or fifty years 
of human life ? Assuredly. But it is not our super- 
fluous sainthood which is destroying life. It is not 
that we have too much saintliness, but too little, too 
limited wisdom, too narrow intelligence, too small an 
endowment of virtue and conscience. It is our fierce 
absorption in outward plans which plants anxieties like 
thorns in the heart. It is our sloth and gluttony which 
eat out vitality. It is our unbridled appetites and pas- 
wsions which burn like a consuming fire in our breasts. 
It is our unwise exposure which saps the strength 
and gives energy and force to latent disease. These, 



SAINTS WHO HAVE HAD BODIES. 393 

tenfold more than any intense application of the brain 
to its legitimate work, limit and destroy human life. 
The truly cultivated mind tends to give just aims, 
moderate desires, and good habits. 

Ay, and when the true sainthood shall possess and 
rule humanity, — when the fields of knowledge with 
their w^holesome fruits shall tempt every foot away 
from the forbidden paths of vice and sensual indulgence, 
— when a wise intelligence shall cool the hot passions 
which dry up the refreshing fountains of peace and joy 
in the heart, — when a heavenly wisdom shall lift us 
above any bondage to this world's fortunes, and when 
a good conscience and a lofty trust shall forbid us to 
be slaves to any occupation lower than the highest, — 
when we stand erect and free, clothed with a real saint- 
liness, — then the years of our life may increase, and 
man may go down to his grave " in a full age, like as 
a shock of corn cometh in in his season." 

Meanwhile, we must stand firmly on this assertion, 
that, the more of mental and moral sainthood our people 
achieve, the more that sainthood will write fair inscrip- 
tions on their bodies, will shine out in intelligence in 
their faces, will exhibit itself in graceful form and 
motion, and thus add to the deeper and more lasting 
virtues physical power, a body which shall be at once 
a good servant and the proper representative of a refined 
and elevated soul. 



OUR BEDOUINS: 
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH THEM? 

Printed in the Unitarian Review, Acgcst, 1877. 

WHEN that steady friend of the Indian, Bishop 
Whipi)le, came to Washington to plead for the 
rights of the red man, Secretary Stanton said : " What 
does the Bishop want ? If he has come here to tell us 
that this government is guilty of gross crimes in its 
dealings with the Indians, we all know that is true. 
Tell him that the United States Government never 
redresses any wrongs until the people demand it ; and, 
when he can reach the heart of the people, these wrongs 
will end," The sturdy and sham-hating Secretary was 
right. Among a free people, a just and lasting settle- 
ment of any great question is not possible, unless first 
there is an intelligent and trustworthy public opinion. 
This is as true of the Indian problem as of any other. 
So the most direct way to secure the red man justice is 
to place before people's minds the exact facts and 
conditions upon which a righteous public sentiment 
must rest. 

Two hundred and fifty years ago, our fathers came 
face to face with the Indian. Three modes of treatment 
were then possible. These savage neighbors could be 
destroyed. They could be banished. They could be civ- 
ilized. In fact, all three methods were tried. Some of 
the most powerful of the New England tribes perished 



OUR BEDOUINS. 395 

in wars whose justice we, who have only the conqueror's 
story, cannot determine. Other tribes, stripped of their 
possessions, were sent westward. The Stockbridges — 
who once owned a large part of Western Massachusetts, 
who early rose above coarse savagery, and who stood 
manfully by the Colonists in the struggle of the Rev- 
olution — have been pushed from one home to another, 
until a remnant now occupies a reservation in Wisconsin 
with soil so poor and cold that their agent reports " that 
a white man could not get a living from it." On the 
prairies there are Delawares, Senecas, Oncidas, — tribes 
which have made half the long journey from the Atlan- 
tic to the Pacific without finding any sure rest to their 
feet. 

Missionary labor was not lacking. In 1646, John 
Eliot began to preach to the Indians of Massachusetts, 
and so successfully that, twenty-nine years later, there 
were in that State eleven hundred praying Indians. 
These poor folks were peaceable and friendly. They 
adopted the habits of civilized life, — built houses, cul- 
tivated land, gathered schools, joined churches, and 
lived worthy of their profession. But the terrible King 
Philip's War ruined this hopeful experiment. Goaded 
by their suspicions and fears, the whites inflicted every 
indignity upon these helpless people. Yoked neck to 
neck, they were hurried to Boston to answer unfounded 
charges. In the fancied security of their homes, they 
were aroused by the hum of musket-balls, bringing 
wounds and death. Finally, whole villages, torn from 
comfortable homes, were transported to the bleak shores 
of Deer Island. Very pathetic was the plaint of some 
of them : " We are not sorry for what we leave behind, 
but we are sorry that the English have driven us from 
our praying to God. We did begin to understand a 



396 OUR BEDOUINS. 

little of praying to God." What wonder if a few turned 
with savage hate upon their oppressors ! What wonder 
that the rest came back from their dreary exile, without 
heart or hope, to sink into shiftless, though not unkindly, 
hangers-on upon a prosperous community ! Any candid 
student must admit that our first experiment in Indian 
civilization failed, because our fathers were not patient 
enough and just enough. In the stress of mighty dan- 
ger, there was no intelligent public opinion to give that 
experiment efficient support. 

The problem of two centuries ago is the problem of 
to-day. In the United States there are three hundred 
thousand Indians. What shall we do with them ? One 
thing we cannot do, — we cannot banish them to new 
soil. The tide of population from the Atlantic, pressing 
them westward, is met by a fresh tide from the Pacific, 
pressing them eastward. They are like deer at bay, sur- 
rounded by the circle of the hunters. Says the Indian 
Report of 1873 : " The progress of our industrial en- 
terprise has left the Indian without resource. Had the 
United States not been extended beyond the frontier 
of 1867, all the Indians would have found beyond it 
an inexhaustible supply of food and clothing. Even 
in 1872, the Indian might have hope of life. But 
another five years will reduce those of Dakota and 
Montana to absolute and habitual suffering." The In- 
dian problem has reached a stage where it must be 
settled. Perpetual removals are no longer possible. 
The savage must meet his fate, whether it be life or 
death, where he is. 

You talk with a frontiersman, and his solution is 
ready : " The only thing to do with an Indian is to 



OUR BEDOUINS. 397 

exterminate him. He is a dirty, vicious, treacherous 
brute. You must wipe him out, sir." Even in Christian 
New England, one sometimes hears the echo of this 
horrible sentiment. Now, to say nothing about the 
right to shelter and food, which the descendants of the 
original owners of the soil might be supposed to have, 
and not to count the dreadful cost in treasure and blood 
which such a process of extermination would involve, 
definitely to propose the annihilation, whether by 
violence, disease, or starvation, of three hundred thou- 
sand human beings is something so absolutely heatlien- 
ish that every thoughtful person turns from it with 
horror. Out on those far-off plains, extermination may 
look to be something unreal and impersonal, and we may 
talk about it lightly and airily, as we would of some 
startling scene in a melodrama ; but let one family of 
these " dirty, vicious, treacherous brutes" be starving 
in any New England village, and how soon the word of 
malediction would change to the deed of charity ! No ! 
Extermination, whether slow or swift, of myriads of 
men, women, and children means unutterable and im- 
measurable woe. It is no solution at all of the problem, 
only a brutal evasion of it. It is a word a Christian 
people should be ashamed to speak. 

To attempt honestly the civilization of the Indian; 
to attempt it, whatever the discouragements ; to attempt 
it, no matter how many our failures ; and to attempt it, 
so long as there is one tribe, or one man, for whom we 
are responsible, — this, for a Christian people, is the 
only possible course. But the Indian is jncapable of 
civilization is the objection which comes back with 
wearisome iteration. All this talk about good Indians, 
and the power of kindness over them, is the weak sen- 
timentality of parlor philanthropists. It is the old 



398 OUR BEDOUINS. 

story, — shifting off the burden of our plain duty, by 
casting contempt upon another's — if you please exag- 
gerated — benevolence. The Indian, you say, is a savage 
in grain, a man of the vrilds. Do what you will with 
him, he goes back to his wigwam and his canoe, and 
leaves behind the delights of civilization as easily as he 
throws off its garments. As though all races were not 
once savage in grain, — men of the wilds, more familiar 
with the instruments of warfare and the chase than 
with the tools of peaceful industry. As though we, 
Saxon oppressors that we are, were not once as filthy, 
as cruel, and as impatient of restraint as any Sioux or 
Comanche of them all. As though, indeed, all races did 
not climb from lower to higher life by slow and uncertain 
steps. 

In face of this persistent sophism which has dogged 
the red man, let it be said once for all, that the question 
of his capacity for civilization is no question at all. 
Notliing but pure ignorance permits any one to entertain 
it. The best proof of capacity is achievement. There 
are civilized Indians. And if whites, in their relations 
with Indians, could temper power with simple justice 
and large wisdom, in ten years there would not be a 
tribe within our borders which had not taken at least 
the first tottering infant steps in that path whose goal 
is knowledge, refinement, and virtue. It is our selfish- 
ness trampling upon clear rights, it is our greed on 
smallest pretext rending asunder solemn treaties, which 
is the one fatal bar to Indian improvement. All the 
rest — the dirt, the laziness, the revolting cruelty, the 
fascination of the wilds — might be overcome. If Chris- 
tians could only learn to be Christians ! Is this strong 
language ? Very well, it is plain truth. 

What constitutes civilization ? Is it living in com- 



OUR BEDOUINS. 399 

fort, having good houses and furniture, wearing decent 
garments ? Then twenty thousand Indian families, de- 
serting the traditional wigwam, have reared and occupy 
humble homes, and wear the attire of civilized life. Is 
it earning support by regular and honest industry ? 
Then twenty-six thousand savages, heads of families, 
last year, by faithful toil, made no inconsiderable addi- 
tion to the great material resources of the United States. 
Is it interest in education ? Then in three hundred and 
fifty schools, eleven thousand Indian children are being 
led out of darkness into light. Is it capacity of self- 
control ? A visitor to a settlement of Oneidas, at 
Green Bay, Wisconsin, reports that, while these people 
in respect to houses, schools, churches, agricultural im- 
plements, and the like, are on a par with their white 
neighbors, their quiet, peaceable, and orderly demeanor 
on Sunday puts to shame the average frontier town. 
Is it attachment to religion ? There are in this Union 
twenty-seven thousand Indians who are members of 
Christian churches, and who do as much credit to their 
profession as their white brethren. Is it power and 
willingness to deal with larger than merely personal 
interests ? In the official report of a visiting committee 
to the Indian Territory occur these remarkable words : 
" We were deeply interested in a visit to the Cherokee 
Legislature, convened at Telequah. We were kindly 
received in a joint session of both houses, and witnessed 
a display of talent, ability, and intelligence, and dignity 
in the management of business, becoming any legisla- 
tive body of whites." If, then, habits of decent life and 
labor, if support of schools and churches, if self-govern- 
ment and tribal government, make men civilized, then 
there are civilized Indians, — a hundred thousand of 
them. 



400 OUR BEDOUINS. 

But some one asks for special instances of Indian 
improvement, in confirmation of this general assertion. 
The demand is reasonable. Take the nearest example. 
In the State of New York there are five thousand 
Indians. They are the descendants of the once famous 
Six Nations, of whom it is not too much to say that 
their name is written in letters of blood and fire on 
frontier history. Scarcely a century ago it was gravely 
stated, in a formal paper, " that these Indians are such 
an ignorant and barbarous people, that they are incapa- 
ble of being civilized, or brought over to Christianity," 
just as to-day many a one says the same thing of their 
brethren in Dakota or Arizona. Fortunately, there were 
men who thought differently ; and the State wisely 
guaranteed to these people eighty-six thousand fertile 
acres, and to their children the benefit of her public 
school system. Note the results. These tribes have 
emerged from the perishing class. Instead of dwin- 
dling, they steadily increase. Not waiting, with sullen 
apathy, to be overwhelmed by the advancing tide of 
higher life, they have welcomed the habits of civilized 
people. They cultivate as much soil as our average 
New England farmers; and to such purpose, that in 
1876 they raised grain to the amount of one hundred 
and sixty bushels to every family. One Seneca Indian 
sold two thousand dollars' wortli of fruit, the product 
of his own orcliards. They live in good houses, send 
their children to the public schools, build churches and 
support them, and, upon an emergency, can supply a 
valuable staff officer to the Lieutenant General of the 
United States army. If this is not civilization, what is 
it ? Yet, thus much have simple justice and the grant- 
ing of equal privileges done in a few generations for 
savages who were once counted the fiercest and most 
untamable of their race. 



OUR BEDOUINS. 401 

Go, in imagination, to the distant Indian Territoiy, 
" that paradise of the red man," as Bishop Whipple 
terms it. Here are sixty thousand civilized Indians, — 
Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Seminoles, — 
names how familiar in the records of Southern war ! 
names of what dread in how many a Southern house- 
hold scarcely fifty years ago ! These Indians are no 
longer barbarians. Nobody would pretend it. They 
wear our costume. All have comfortable homes, de- 
cently furnished. Some have elegant homes, in which 
you find carpets, sewing-machines, pianos, pictures, and 
all the paraphernalia of advanced American life. The 
United States Official Report states that the Indians of 
this Territory raised, in 1872, five times as much grain 
as was raised in any other Territory ; and that the 
farms and improvements were twice as valuable as those 
of any other. At the National Fair at St. Louis, the 
Creeks, in free competition with white producers, took 
three premiums for the best specimens of cotton. Put, 
now, in a condensed form, the actual condition and 
achievements of these children of a race said to be 
incapable of progress ; then look at it, until you take 
in the full meaning of its testimony. Here, in round 
numbers, are sixty thousand Indians. They cultivate 
two hundred thousand acres of land. From those acres 
they raise two million bushels of grain, one hundred 
and eighty thousand bushels of vegetables, and one hun- 
dred and forty thousand tons of hay. From their w^ood- 
lands they cut six millions of feet of lumber, and they own 
more than a million of domestic animals, — a number 
greater than is owned in twenty-six of our States and 
Territories. Turn from material achievements, to see 
if there are any tokens of mental and spiritual advance- 
ment. As these people are not barbarians^ so too they 

26 



402 OUR BEDOUINS. 

are not heathen. They support two hundred and eight 
schools. They have eighty-five churches, with twelve 
thousand members. A competent witness gives it as 
his opinion, that these Indians, in the three qualities of 
industry, frugality, and sobriety, will bear comparison 
with an equal population taken bodily out of any agri- 
cultural district in the Southern or border States. The 
Indian Report of 1869, written when these tribes had 
scarcely emerged out of that Civil War whose bitterness 
and demoralizing power they had known to the full, 
speaks in these striking terms : " Their condition, 
socially and politically, will bear favorable comparison 
with that of the white settlers upon the borders of 
Texas and Arkansas, and " — mark it — " the laws are 
more respected and better enforced among these people 
than among their white neighbors." 

There is no need of exaggeration. No wise person 
could wish to invest these people with romantic and un- 
real virtues, or ascribe to them an improbable excellence. 
No doubt there are less agreeable features to contem- 
plate. Strange if there were not. Very likely, in the 
best of their settlements, there is much indolence, much 
vice, and some crime. But must one travel all the way 
to the Indian Territory to discover these evils ? Or if, 
perchance, in the dark retreats of Boston and New 
York true savages with barbarian instincts lurk, does 
any one on that account doubt the possibility of Chris- 
tian life in these great cities ? Grant, if any one affirms 
it, that, compared with European and American stand- 
ards, this civilization is not high civilization, still it 
remains true, that, in all human history, there is 
scarcely an instance of progress out of barbarism so 
rapid, so entire, and so satisfactory as that which, in 
less than a century, has transformed one hundred thou- 



OUR BEDOUINS. 403 

sand savages ^ living in wigwams or huts, lurking in 
thickets, tomahawks and scalping-knives in their hands, 
to destroy the unwary — into law-abiding and Christian 
people. And the unvarnished and unexaggerated fact 
is, that scant justice, a fair opportunity in life, only 
moderate protection from the greed and violence of un- 
principled men, and the active efforts of Christian 
teachers and missionaries to foster industry, knowledge, 
and virtue, have carried these of old time fierce bar- 
barians far up in the scale of mental and spiritual man- 
hood. But admit this, the soberest conclusion possible, 
and you admit everything. If these Indians are capable 
of civilization, all Indians, under proper conditions, are 
capable of it. To those, therefore, who say that an 
Indian cannot be civilized, we point to one hundred 
thousand Indians already far advanced in the arts of 
life, self-supporting, self-respecting, learning to value 
education, learning to crave the comforts and even the 
luxuries of refined life,- — to thousands of Indians bow- 
ing like ourselves, in Christian churches, to worship the 
same God, and to learn to follow the same Master. If 
anybody does not know these things, it is his own fault. 
They are an open secret, outspread, year after year, 
upon the pages of official reports. Most effectually do 
they dispose of the foolish assertion that men, — im- 
mortal beings, — because, forsooth, the color of their 
skin is not white, are incapable of that great advancing 
life of industry, of enterprise, of knowledge, and of 
virtue proper to our humanity. 

So much for the results in the past of scanty justice and 
humanity. We emphasize the word past. For, however 
faithfully the good work may have been continued in these 
latter days, its initiation must, in all fairness, be placed 



404 OUK BEDOUIXS. 

to the credit of a former generation. But what of the 
present ? As clearly, within the last dozen years there 
has been a revival of interest, and a revival of conscience, 
in respect to the red man and our duties to him. The 
origin of this revival may be traced, in part, to that 
great act of justice, the emancipation of the blacks, which 
tended to fix the attention of thoughtful persons upon our 
relations to all dependent people. Still more, this revival 
originated in the emergencies of the times. The construc- 
tion of the great Continental Railroad, and the discovery 
at various points in the Trans-Mississippi country of rich 
mining regions, brought the people of the United States — 
and not a few hunters and trappers — into contact with 
that great horde of savages whose home was the vast 
plains of the extreme West, and whose only support was 
the almost innumerable herds of bison which roamed 
over those plains. This revival was the opposite of ro- 
mantic or sentimental. It was fed, not by a perusal of 
Cooper, but by a study of the dry yet suggestive details 
of official reports, in which not one feature of Indian 
sloth, cruelty, or degradation was withheld. The prac- 
tical outcome of that revival was what is familiarly 
called President Grant's peace policy. To what extent 
that policy originated in the President's own mind, or 
was the result of the recommendations of the committee 
of Congress, appointed in 1867, to examine into the con- 
dition of the Indian tribes, it is impossible to say. But 
that, during the eight years of his administration. General 
Grant adhered to it with steady fidelity is generally ad- 
mitted. And, when the transient heats of the time shall 
cool, this uniform spirit of justice and humanity toward 
a helpless people will shed a pure lustre upon his mem- 
ory. This policy may be defined to be an honest effort, 
by peaceful methods, to withhold the Indian from hos- 



OUR BEDOUINS. 405 

tility ; to instruct him in the employments and arts of 
civilized life ; to replace in his mind heathen supersti- 
tions by Christian faith and practices, and thus to lift 
him to a position in which he shall be fit for full citizen- 
ship, — owning his own land, receiving as others the 
protection, and bearing as others the burdens and penal- 
ties of law. 

Of this peace policy, five salient features may be noted. 
In the first place, the Indian tribes have been put in 
charge, not of the War Office, but of the Department of 
the Interior ; and this, not because military men are, on 
the whole, less disposed than others to render justice and 
kindness, but because an army from its very intent, and 
especially from the material which fills its ranks, is an 
unfit instrument for the advancement of a savage people 
in the arts of peace. What the Austrian explorer said 
of the French colonies applies here, — "No industrial 
progress where there is too much clank of the sabre ! " 
In the second place, all just means have been used to 
bring tribes into reservations of moderate extent, where 
support must depend more upon the plough and the 
reaper than upon the rifle and the fishing-rod. This is 
according to the philosophy of human progress. Man 
begins a hunter, and too often a robber. The next stage 
is pastoral life. Then follows the tilling of the soil. So 
the moment our American Bedouin settles down to agri- 
culture, he makes two vast leaps forward. In the third 
place, it has more clearly established the principle, that 
annuities already due Indians, or any sums which shall 
be appropriated by Congress to Indians, shall more 
largely be devoted to the establishment of influences 
permanently elevating. Seed and farmer's tools are 
given to encourage agriculture. Comely and durable 
houses are built to discourage migratory life. School- 



406 OUR BEDOUINS. 

houses are erected, books provided, teachers sent, to 
create new and higher desires. In the fourth place, the 
great religious sects have been enlisted in the work. To 
each of these bodies special tribes have been assigned ; 
and it is understood that they will suggest suitable per- 
sons to act as agents, and supplement the government 
work by educational and religious influences furnished 
by them. This is a striking feature of the peace policy. 
The persons in charge of Indians, at any rate, are selected 
because of their supposed mental and moral fitness ; and 
if bad men occasionally get into posts of duty, and cheat 
their clients, it is not the fault of the system, but of a 
careless application of it. Again, just to the degree that 
the religious bodies enter with zeal into the work will an 
intelligent idea of the real condition of the Indians be 
diffused, and a healthy public sentiment grow up. In 
the fifth place, the President selects, from men eminent 
for their practical wisdom and philanthropy, a Board of 
Commissioners, who, serving without pay, shall exercise 
in Indian affairs advisory and supervisory powers. And 
these five methods are adopted to the end that as 
speedily as possible an Indian may become, in the eye 
of the law, a man, with all the rights and privileges 
which should belong to him as an individual. To-day 
government does not recognize a private Indian, but only 
the tribe of which he is a member. To-day an Indian 
owns no land ; he is simply a fraction of a tribe which 
owns land. To-day an Indian has no rights which he 
can maintain in our courts of law. To-day an Indian 
may rob an Indian, or kill him ; or a white man may 
cheat an Indian, or luuit him to death ; and it is difficult 
to say what is the remedy, if not private revenge. Could 
anything be worse ? Under such conditions, are not 
bloody wrongs and bloody reprisals daily possibilities? 



OUR BEDOUINS. 407 

And is not the inducement to an Indian to be honest, to 
be peaceable, and to be industrious reduced to its lowest 
terms ? The sooner Indians can be prepared to give up 
tribal relations, and become citizens of the United States, 
the better. And that the peace policy, from the begin- 
ning, has clearly seen the necessity of such a step, and 
steadily pressed forward to it, should have saved it from 
those sneers about sentimentality in wdiich many who 
should know better have indulged. 

Pass now from the theory to the practical working of 
the peace policy. At the outset it is to be observed that 
it had to deal with an entirely new set of conditions. 
The Six Nations, the tribes of the Indian Territory, the 
Shawnees, the Miamis, and indeed all the red men who 
make up the civilized one hundred thousand in the 
United States, had confronted civilization for two cen- 
turies. They were familiar with its aspects ; they under- 
stood the tremendous elements of power which it wielded ; 
they had come to know that there was no escape from 
annihilation except through a desertion of tlie ways of 
their fathers. But the Indians of the plains had been 
touched only by the outmost fringe of civilization. They 
knew of its virtues and its power only througli hunters 
and trappers almost as savage as themselves. Thus the 
peace policy had to do with some of the wildest tribes on 
this continent, who had been accustomed from time im- 
memorial to a roving life, whose instinct was to spurn 
all control, and who had gained from the whites nothing 
but memories of bad faith, and new and revolting forms 
of cruelty, to add to their native and almost untamable 
fierceness. All of these tribes despised habits of indus- 
try. Some were so supremely ignorant of agriculture 
that they could not conceive for what purpose seed was 



408 OUR BEDOUINS. 

sown. Add now that on the frontier are many bad men, 
whose interest it is to keep the Indian ignorant and hos- 
tile, and multitndes of honest men, whose prejudices 
and fears make them terribly unjust ; consider too how 
hard it is, under any system, to find agents who shall be 
wise and capable, and at the same time honest and 
self-sacrificing ; and one sees that, amidst such obsta- 
cles, slow and doubtful success was all which could be 
expected. 

Some striking results, however, have followed the 
adoption of the peace policy. At any rate, it has justi- 
fied its name ; it has promoted peace. During the last 
seven years, only two considerable outbreaks have dis- 
turbed the tranquillity of the frontier, — the frantic ris- 
ing of a handful of Modocs, and the defiant revolt of 
Sitting Bull. Neither of these, it will be admitted, were 
occasioned by too great, but by too little adherence to 
the principles of justice and forbearance. In 1876, there 
were seventy-three agencies, having under more or less 
close supervision over two hundred thousand Indians. 
These wards of the nation ranged all the way from 
the most civilized tribes down to Cheyennes, Kiowas, 
Comanches, Apaches, and Blackfeet, — names which 
come even now with a wild flavor to the lii)S, and smack 
more of the tomahawk and the scalping-knife than of 
the plough or the school ; yet seventy-two of these 
agencies report perfect peace in their borders, and in 
the seventy-third the breach of peace amounts only to 
this, that a dozen Indians in a fit of intoxication killed 
the trader and his two assistants who supplied the whis- 
key which put fire into their wild blood, — hardly a 
greater outrage than may happen any day in the slums 
of any one of our large cities. A few cases of sudden 
and generally unpremeditated violence may be added ; 



OUR BEDOUINS. 409 

and then you have the whole story of that class of 
Clime among two hundred thousand Indians confronted 
by twice that number of not always over-scrupulous 
whites. 

But peace is not the sole result of this policy. In 
sixty-nine of the agencies there are Indians who have 
abandoned the dress and habits of savage life. In some, 
only here and there one ; in others, many ; in a few, all. 
Sixty-three agencies report that members of tlieir tribes 
are steadily engaged in farming. Most of the tribes 
have schools ; many have churches. One thousand 
Indians learned to read last year. Twenty-seven thou- 
sand are church members. And, when one considers 
what an abandonment of old supersitions and old habits 
of life church membership indicates, the fact is sig- 
nificant. And over and above all special facts, and 
perhaps more important than all special facts, is the 
general fact, that the idea is getting entrance into the 
savage mind that the days of wild freedom are about 
numbered, and that industry and settled life — in fine, 
civilization — is coming to be a stern necessity. The 
official Report suras up by saying that, of the two 
hundred and seventy-five thousand Indians in the 
United States, one hundred thousand may be called 
civilized, one hundred thousand semi-civilized, while 
seventy-five thousand have not as yet been gathered 
into reservations. Of the whole number, hardly ten 
thousand are in any sense hostile ; while the rest are at 
peace, and would gladly remain so. And in justice to 
the innocent it should be stated that, almost without 
exception, those acts of ferocious cruelty and of revolt- 
ing wrongs to female captives, which figure so largely 
in books of the frontier, and which tend to create bitter- 
ness towards all Indians, are the acts of this insignificant 
fraction of the race. 



410 OUR BEDOUINS. 

"Would that we could get behind these cold figures, 
and see the living facts which these figures record, — 
the slow growth of degraded human beings out of filth, 
indolence, and violence into better life ! Here are the 
Sioux. The general idea is that they are an altogether 
fierce, sullen, intractable, treacherous race. The dis- 
tinguished members of the Sioux Commission dissent. 
They say that they are one of the finest tribes of Indians 
on this continent ; that once they were friends ; that 
even now not one sixth of them have been driven by bitter 
wrongs into hostility. Of one village of eighteen hun- 
dred of these people, this is the story. All wear citizen's 
dress, and live in decent houses. Eight hundred can 
read and write. One hundred and fifteen children are 
in school. Four churches, with three hundred and fifty 
members, are supported. To which tlicir agent adds, 
that almost without exception every able-bodied Indian 
works ; and those who work most are most respected. 
The church Indians stand firmly by their faith, and by 
word and practice endeavor to lead others to the Gospel 
liglit. In another little Sioux village, one hundred 
heads of families have taken homesteads under the law 
of the United States. They have married their wives 
after the Christian manner, live on their own farms, pay 
their taxes promptly, obey strictly the laws, and give no 
cause of offence. As much as this cannot be said of all 
branches of this great tribe. But it can be said that 
twenty-five thousand Sioux are to-day living on their law- 
ful reservations, and minding their own business, and at 
least looking toward civilization. Here again are the 
Chippewas of Minnesota, six thousand strong. Ten 
years ago the report was that they were a roving people, 
in a low and degraded condition, living by hunting and 
fishing, and it is feared by no little stealing, and were 



OUR BEDOUINS. 411 

much demoralized by contact with vicious whites. In 
ten brief years, these low and degraded Chippewas have 
settled down into orderly, decent living, industrious, 
moral, — yes, and God-fearing communities. Their 
minister, who has given his life to them, warmly writes : 
" Our Chippewas have never imbrued their hands with 
white blood. Though deeply wronged, though left liter- 
ally to starve for want of that of which they have been 
fleeced, they have stood by government and fought for 
government. Had they not been the most patient of 
people, they would have risen against their plunderers, 
and died to the last man." Of the children he says, 
" A better set of children in a school than our pupils I 
never saw." These examples are favorable ones. Cer- 
tainly. For that they were chosen, — not to show what 
stupidity, carelessness, and selfish greed can do, but what 
real sagacity and Christian spirit have accomplished and 
can again accomplish. Still, in the whole seventy-tliree 
agencies there is scarcely one where there is not to be 
discerned some little ray of light piercing the darkness, 
to prophesy a coming day. 

And now let it be freely admitted that in respect to 
the later efforts for Indian improvement, as in respect 
to the earlier efforts, these favorable statements, though 
coming from a source not usually infected with enthu- 
siasm, namely, United States Official Reports, may be 
too hopeful. Probably, if you were to go into the best 
of the Indian towns, you would find more indolence and 
more vice than would be quite cheering. Certainly 
from all these tribes there drift into our frontier towns 
dirty, drunken, vicious red men, who are the merest 
wrecks of humanity. But to-day do not white men 
come to our doors as shiftless, as dirty, as given to 
drink, as dangerous, as any Indian of them all ? And 



412 OUE BEDOUINS. 

despite all that, despite tramps who bring terror to 
lonely women and secluded homes, despite dangerous 
savages who lurk in dark corners and dens of great 
cities, do we not hold the white man capable of civil- 
ization? And do we not refuse to be judged by these 
waifs and drift-wood, which the refluent wave of human 
progress has left stranded ? Might we not grant what 
we ourselves ask, and judge of the capacity of the red 
man by those who stay at home and cultivate their 
acres, and support their families, and worship their God 
in peace ? Very likely the truth demands that we 
should see darker shadows, and admit that even in the 
so called peaceful tribes there grow up young warriors 
in whose veins courses the untamable blood of their 
ancestors, who cannot teach their wild hearts to submit 
to restraint, who slip out from the reservations and be- 
come outlaws, and as outlaws commit nameless horrors. 
Very likely there are such. Few, however, in com- 
parison with the whole. But what inference shall we 
draw ? How wide ? How inclusive ? Three quarters 
of a century ago Wellington's veterans, the soldiers 
of Christian England, stormed several Spanish cities. 
Then ensued scenes of rapine, of violence, of unbridled 
and wholesale lust, which the pen refuses to describe. 
Yet on account of these exceptional horrors we do not 
deny England her high seat among civilized people. 
Shall we discriminate against the race which has had 
little advantages, and because one per cent, or at most 
two, break loose from the new bonds, and relapse into sav- 
agery, pronounce the policy of peace and steady kindness 
and justice sheer imbecility ? Establish as trenchant 
limitations as you please, still it remains true that 
the peace policy has proved that the Indians of tlic plains 
can be civilized, and that if the process of extermination 



OUR BEDOUINS. 413 

is not replaced by that of civilization, it is because a 
Christian people despises the duty which lies at its 
door. 

What now, outside the native and inherited fierceness 
and waywardness of Indian character, stands in the way 
of the success of any policy, peace or otherwise, which 
seeks the advancement of the wild men of the plains ? 
One thing, — injustice. Injustice ! in spirit ever the 
same ; in form, protean. Injustice ! in the first place, 
taking the shape of petty wrongs, perpetually exasperat- 
ing a brave, high-spirited, and revengeful race. An 
Indian, like every other savage, is a grown up child, in 
whom a child's carelessness of consequences is wedded 
to the strong passions of a man. His temptation is to 
act upon first impulse. Now, when your rights are 
trampled upon, and your property stolen, and you have 
no hope of peaceable redress, what is your first impulse ? 
To right yourself with your own strong arm. That is 
the very feeling of the Indian. But if he follow it, no 
matter what the provocation, farewell to peace, farewell 
to progress ! Red Cloud, the great chief of the Northern 
Sioux, looking from his encampment across the river, 
sees white men cutting hay and felling trees on the 
land which had just been secured to him by solemn 
treaty ; and he says, " I learned, when I was in the 
States, that, if a man cut hay or wood on another's land, 
he had to pay for it. Why can't I get pay for my wood 
and hay ? " To be sure, why not ? For no reason, 
except that there was no court on earth before which 
he could come to get justice. The Indians of Fort 
Berthold cut and piled on the banks of the Missouri 
five hundred cords of wood, hoping to turn an honest 
penny by the sale of the same to steamboats ; but when 



414 OUR BEDOUINS. 

the captains took it without giving so much as thanks, 
the Indians were somewhat shaken in their faith in the 
value of labor. Would not you, my reader, have been 
a trifle discouraged ? The agent appointed by our 
Association writes that the Utes are very friendly 
Indians ; but that they understand the terms of their 
treaty, and cannot be fooled. If he has any trouble, 
it will be on account of whites who will encroach upon 
their lands. These wrongs may not separately look 
large. But multiply them a hundred-fold, let them 
occur constantly, and with no hope of redress, and 
would they not try a saint's temper, much more an 
Indian's, who, like Rob Roy's Highlander, is " not 
famous for that gude gift " ? 

These petty injuries may deepen into mighty wrongs, 
which make the red man feel that he can find justice 
nowhere. Take the Black Hills question, as being 
nearest to us both in time and interest. Three years 
ago, the great tribe of fifty thousand Sioux was peace- 
able, with the exception of a little band under Sitting 
Bull, variously estimated at five hundred to a thousand 
braves, encamped near the head waters of the Missouri. 
This chief had refused to enter into treaty relations, 
saying, with bitter irony, "that when the United States 
would send a man who could tell the truth, he should 
be glad to see him." But he was too weak in resources 
to attempt much, and was forced to be content with 
raids upon his tribal foes, — the Crows and Pawnees, — 
and was sure to be crushed or driven over the border 
as soon as government seriously took him in hand. 
What has changed this hopeful condition of affairs ? 
The unjust appropriation of the Black Hills. This 
tract of country had been secured to the Sioux by as 
solemn a compact as man can frame, — secured after 



OUR BEDOUINS. 415 

Red Cloud had stated the nature of former injuries, and 
how " the railroad had passed through his country and 
paid for his land nothing, — no, not so much as a brass 
ring ! " The valleys too, which ran up among these hills, 
were extremely fertile, and contained the only land in 
the Dakota reservation fitted for aginculture. In 1874, 
there came a rumor that there was gold in these hills. 
Quickly General Custer is sent with surveyors and 
mineralogists to examine, much as if one should open 
your pocket-book to see if there was anything in it 
worth stealing. Then thousands of squatters followed, 
and took possession. How barefaced, and how sus- 
tained by a bad public sentiment, this violent seizure of 
another's property was, we learn, not from the defenders 
of the peace policy alone, but equally from its oppo- 
nents ; for in the biography of Custer we find this re- 
markable admission : " All arrests of miners by the 
military in the Black Hills proved a farce ; because, when 
said miners were carried before the Dakota courts, they 
were immediately released without punishment, and as 
immediately went back," It is not wonderful that the 
able men who made up the Sioux Commission felt their 
cheeks crimson as they listened to the simple, shameful 
truth as it fell from the lips of these rude men of the 
woods. It is not very wonderful that these painted and 
plumed diplomatists were not anxious to take part in 
a miserable sham of a treaty, whose ink might not be 
dry before its conditions were trampled upon. It is not 
so surprising if many a Sioux thought that a quick, 
and to his savage mind honorable, death was better, 
than to sink from haughty freedom to wretched depend- 
ence. For to barbarians as well as to their civilized 
brethren there come times when, in the presence of 
mighty wrongs, all selfish interests sink into insignifi- 



416 OUR BEDOUINS. 

cance. Lccast of all is it wonderful that, when our 
government, with all its resources, cannot prevent vol- 
unteers from going to Nicaragua, to Cuba, to Canada, 
Red Cloud and the other Sioux chiefs could not prevent 
some thousand or two of their braves, under such provo- 
cation, stealing away to join the hostile band. The 
Black Hills outrage sealed the fate of Custer and his 
brave companions ; for it changed Sitting Bull from an 
outlaw into the bold avenger of a broken treaty. 

Recall the once famous Chivington massacre, — an old 
story, but pregnant with lessons, and whose features we 
know, not by the representations of friends or foes of the 
Indian, but through sworn testimony from all classes of 
people except the Indians themselves, taken by a select 
committee of Congress. In 1864, a war broke out be- 
tween the whites and the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. 
"Which was the aggressor is in dispute, though the 
weight of evidence is against the whites. Be that as it 
may, in September of that year. Black Kettle, a chief 
whom General Harney said " was as good a friend of 
the United States as he himself was," led a band of six 
hundred men, women, and children to Fort Lyon. He 
stated that " he desired peace, and had never desired 
war." Colonel Wynkoop, the commander, permitted 
him to encamp in the vicinity of the fort to await the 
action of government. While they were thus encamped, 
Colonel Chivington with a thousand or two volunteers 
appeared on the scene. He was told what the condition 
of affairs was. The Indians raised the American flag 
and under it a white flag. Relying upon the promise of 
protection, at first they made no resistance. Finally, 
finding themselves attacked by ten times their number, 
and no quarter given, the scanty band of warriors rallied, 
and, by desperate fighting, succeeded in escnping with 



OUR BEDOUINS. 417 

two thirds of the village. After all resistance was over, 
women and even children of six or eight years were shot 
in cold blood. The bodies of men, women, and children 
were scalped and mutilated in a manner too vile and too 
horrible for pen to record. What a lesson to rude sav- 
ages in civilization ! What a plea to ignorant heathen 
for Christianity ! It is sometimes said, as though it was 
an all-sufficing excuse, that these Cheyennes have com- 
mitted acts just as horrible. Admitted. Yet methinks 
the noble words of the latest biographer of Edmund 
Burke fit the Western as well as the Eastern hemi- 
sphere : " Ingenious apologists assure us, with impressive 
gravity, that the East India Company and its servants 
were not any more cruel and greedy than the native 
princes. If they are content that Europeans in the 
latter half of the eighteenth century should be no worse 
than these barbarians, this protest is perfectly adequate. 
But enlightened public opinion rests on this pardonable 
hypothesis, that Europeans ought not only to have been 
less tyrannical, perfidious, and destructive than bar- 
barous rajahs, but not to have been tyrannical and per- 
fidious at all." 

Nor are these solitary cases of injustice. Take the case 
of the Round Valley Indians of California, from whom, 
by a few strokes of the pen in a legal enactment, twenty 
thousand acres of beautiful arable land were taken, to be 
replaced by a wild, desolate mountain, on which a single 
sheep could hardly get support ; or that of the Osages, 
whose very cornfields were seized and occupied by squat- 
ters ; or that of the Ottawas, from whom the State of 
Kansas took and held twenty thousand acres of land 
which had been granted them by solemn treaty to be 
used for purposes of education. If it be true, and, 
alas! true it is, that in this country not a foot of Indian 
27 



418 OUR BEDOUINS. 

land is safe, or that no treaty, however solemn, has ever 
bound wliitcs in opposition to their supposed interest, 
how can the savage have faith in our justice, or what 
possible inducement is there for him to enter upon a 
course of civilized life ? His civilization must always be 
threatened, as the Alpine village is threatened by some 
overhanging precipice or great avalanche, which at any 
moment may be loosed to sweep away the beauty, the 
comfort, and the homes which the labor of generations 
has gathered. 

And so persistent injustice tends to press its victims 
down to a point where not only is civilization impossible, 
but even so active a vice as revenge is impossible ; when 
the Indian, losing all legal possession of the soil, having 
no right to the ground on which he treads or the sod 
which shall cover him, sinks into pure hopelessness 
and shiftlessness. Here is the tale of the Mission 
Indians of Southern California, condensed from Official 
Reports. About a century ago, the Catholic priests of 
the Pacific Coast established in that fertile region mis- 
sion stations, and gathered around them the neighboring 
Indians, whom they instructed in the simpler arts of life, 
and especially in agriculture. For nearly three quarters 
of a century the descendants of these Indians continued 
to live on the land which their fathers had occupied, 
without however acquiring any legal title to it. When, 
in 1833, the church lands were secularized, this whole 
domain was divided among a few great Spanish and 
Mexican proprietors. The Indians remained on the 
land, careless of the change, and probably unaware of it. 
But with the great tide of emigration occasioned by the 
gold fever, everything altered. Land became valuable. 
Gradually these original occupants have been driven out. 
Writs of ejectment have been obtained without the 



OUR BEDOUIXS. 419 

knowledge of their victims, served, and in some cases 
the very crops and other personal property of the In- 
dians taken to satisfy legal costs. Thus cast out naked 
into what had proved to them a cold world, they have 
easily fallen into destitution and vice. Disease and 
death have followed, until the twenty-five thousand of 
1826 have become the four thousand of 1876. 

One readily sees, therefore, that, in addition to the 
necessary difficulties springing out of the inherited 
qualities and traditional habits of the savage, there are 
other obstacles to Indian improvements quite as great, 
for which his civilized brother is accountable. Very 
easy is it for a tribe, deceived many times, seeing little 
to encourage, and robbed of all rights and privileges, to 
drop into a vagrant race of beggars and drunkards. Or 
in a clear sky a cloud may gather, and the very people 
for whom we were hoping much, exasperated beyond the 
limits of savage patience, hurl themselves in blind hate 
upon friend and foe alike ; and in that Saturnalia, a six 
months' border war, all the little results, and more, of 
ten years' wise and patient labor be swept away. 

All through this paper we have indicated wiiat things 
are needful to make efforts for Indian improvement suc- 
cessful. Unquestionably the first and the all-essential 
requirement is the creation of a wide-spread, permanent, 
sensible, and Christian public sentiment. So long as 
the great body of the people are careless about the ques- 
tion, we shall always be in danger of drifting into acts 
of stupidity or injustice. And so long as it is possible 
to-day to create a furor for the Indian by some story of 
his wonderful progress in knowledge and virtue, and to- 
morrow to replace it by as great a. furor against him on 
account of some other tale of his ferocity, all policy 



420 OUE BEDOUINS. 

concerning him must be provisional. We need, then, a 
permanent Christian sentiment. Not less do we need a 
sensible, we may say a common sense public sentiment. 
Nobody but an idiot wishes to create or continue any 
ideal or fantastic romance about the red man, as though 
he were a true king of the woods, — Nature's nobleman, 
— a sort of primitive Washington or Franklin in breech 
cloth and blanket. Least of all do those who are now 
laboring for the Indians wish to lend their names and 
influence to the support of such nonsense. They rec- 
ognize, and desire that all others should recognize, that 
the Indians of the plains are savages, with the vices and 
cruelty, the waywardness and intolerance of restraint, 
which belong to savages ; but they see, and would have 
other people see, that they are also human, with all the 
possibilities of humanity, with elements in them out of 
which may come, under proper conditions, intelligent 
and noble life ; but they understand that these elements 
are not to be freed from the dense ignorance and brutal- 
ity in which they are wellnigh smothered, in a day or a 
year. They know, therefore, that what most of all is 
needed is a permanent and sensible Christian sentiment, 
which takes up the work of Indian improvement, not be- 
cause it is attractive, and not because it has no dis- 
couragements and obstacles, but because it is the work 
which has been given us to do. 

Should such a wise and just public sentiment ever be 
established, its first business will be to repress the petty 
and the wholesale injustice which so often drive our 
native tribes to madness, and which make equitable 
people look upon the savage outrages which succeed 
with divided sentiments ; and to repress with no less 
unsparing vigor the barbarous ferocity which not only 
refuses to take up the habits of civilized life, but which, 



OUR BEDOUINS. 421 

unprovoked, seeks to ravage and lay waste the frontier ; 
for what the true friend of the Indian asks is not his 
immunity from law, but an equal and equitable applica- 
tion of law to all parties. 

If, now, we come to methods, — if any wise lessons 
can be drawn from experience, — the methods of the 
future must be much like those of the past : to bring 
the tribes by all just means into reservations so narrow 
that roving life shall no longer be possible, so fertile 
that honest labor shall easily win a living; then to pour 
into those reservations all elevating influences, — instruc- 
tion in the mechanic arts, helps to agriculture, teachers 
for the mind, missionaries for the soul. The late treaty 
with the Northern Sioux — largely, we suspect, the 
work of Bishop Whipple — shows how true wisdom can 
walk hand in hand with true philanthropy. That treaty 
provides that the amount of the payments made for the 
Black Hills shall depend largely upon the fidelity with 
which the tribe engages in agriculture, and upon the 
steadiness with which it sends its children to the govern- 
ment schools ; a new application of the old Scripture, — 
"If any would not work, neither should he eat." 

But wise methods we shall find just as soon as we re- 
ally want them, even if the old ones are not good. Still 
we run round the circle, and come again to our starting 
point. Give us a just, a wide, an enduring public senti- 
ment, and all the rest will follow, — the wisdom to plan, 
the patience to persist, the generosity to give, the Chris- 
tian love and zeal to override all obstacles, and by its 
own fervor to melt the cold heart and icy barriers of 
barbarism. 



MEMOIR OF GRINDALL REYNOLDS, SENIOR. 

Peepared by his son, Rev. Geindall Reynolds, foe the Seventy- 
first Anniversary of the Providence Association of Me- 
chanics AND MaNUFACTCEEES, FEBRUARY 27, 1860. 

GRINDALL REYNOLDS was the second of seven 
sous of John and Dorothy Reynolds.^ He 
was born at Bristol, R. I., October 12, 1755. His 
parents were in humble circumstances, but of great 
integrity and firm religious principle. At the age of 
nine years, he was apprenticed to Jonathan Capron, a 
tailor of Providence. His opportunities for educa- 
tion while at home were quite limited, and after he 
entered upon his apprenticeship he never enjoyed for 
a day school privileges, — a deprivation which, so far 
from destroying, seemed rather to stimulate his love 
of learning. To increase his scanty stock of knowl- 
edge, he employed the long winter evenings in reading 
by the firelight, and often rose before the sun to peruse 
the few books which fell in his way. Very early he 
became deeply interested in religious subjects, and 
when Mr, Whitefield preached in Providence he at- 
tended the four o'clock morning meetings, because that 

1 ]\Ir. Reynolds's eldest brother died from the effects of a bay- 
onet wound received at the capture of General Charles Lee of the 
Revolutionary army, of whose life-guard he was a member. The 
youngest died in infancy. The remaining four deceased at the 
following advanced ages : William, eighty-four ; Edward, eighty- 
six ; Benjamin, eighty-six ; John, eighty-eight. 



MEMOIR OF GRINDALL REYNOLDS, SENIOR. 423 

was the only time he could snatch from toil. At four- 
teen he entered the Presbyterian Church, though after- 
wards his views very materially changed. 

About 1774, Mr. Capron gave up all charge of his 
apprentices, and left Providence ; and thus, at the age 
of eighteen or nineteen, young Reynolds was thrown 
upon the world, dependent upon his own unaided re- 
sources, at a time when political convulsions had made 
the returns from mercantile and mechanical industry 
at once scanty and uncertain. Of the next six or 
eight years of his life we have only slight hints. It is 
known that he went to Boston, where his parents then 
resided ; that he was in that town during its occupation 
by the British ; that he was dangerously sick then and 
there with the small-pox, a disease which the soldiers 
had introduced into Boston, and which made fearful 
ravages ; that he was in the mob which assembled after 
the murder of Crispus Attucks ; that he escaped with 
his parents into the country, about the time of the 
battle at Concord; that from a neighboring hill he wit- 
nessed the terrible struggle at Bunker Hill; that he 
worked at his trade in West Roxbury, the place where 
his mother was born ; that for a portion of three years, 
at least, he served as Sergeant, Ensign, and Lieutenant 
in the Revolutionary army, though it does not appear 
that he saw much actual service. 

In 1780, Mr. Reynolds returned to Providence. For 
twelve years he continued working quietly at his trade, 
in a shop next north of the present No. 83, North Main 
Street. During this time business was dull and pros- 
pects were discouraging, and he was induced to go to Nor- 
folk, Virginia, and engage in business with his brother 
Benjamin, who made that place his permanent home. 
His stay there, however, was short. He returned to 



424 MEMOIR OF GRIND ALL REYNOLDS, SENIOR. 

Providence previous to 1795, and engaged in the shoe 
business, in company with James Temple. In 1796, 
the partnership was dissolved, and Mr. Reynolds opened 
a wholesale boot and shoe store " at Governor Tenner's 
corner," on the east side of North Main Street near 
Market Square, " one door north " of his former loca- 
tion, where was kept for sale a general assortment for 
men's, ladies', and children's wear, "as neat as any 
made in the United States or imported from Europe. " 
In 1801, he removed Lis business "'to the house of 
John Mason, Esq., on the west side of the bridge, next 
westward of Mr. Aldrich's tavern,*' on Weybosset 
Street. As an evidence of his business energy, it may 
be mentioned that at a period of great depression he 
commenced, and by persevering industry and unflinch- 
ing economy finished without debt, a house on the 
corner of Chestnut and Pine Streets. As marking the 
changes that have taken place in that neighborhood, it 
is worthy of note that his house was set so low in the 
side of a hill that a plank could be put horizontally 
from the top of the hill to the roof of the building. 
The hill has since disappeared. He also erected and 
occupied the house on the corner of Benefit and Church 
Streets, now owned by Mr. Samuel Hamlin, but whether 
before or after he lived on the west side is unknown. 

Mr. Reynolds was an original member of the 
Mechanics Association, and as a member of various 
committees gave his active influence to the advance- 
ment of its interests. "When the Association determined 
on a course of quarterly lectures, he by appointment 
delivered the second, which was received with com- 
mendation. He also, on another occasion, delivered 
an address before that body. He sympathized with 
the movement for establishing free schools in Rhode 



MEMOIR or GRINDALL REYNOLDS, SENIOR. 425 

Island, and, with a clear appreciation of the worth of 
education to the State as well as to the individual, he 
proved himself a worthy coadjutor of the leading spirits 
in that noble enterprise. He built the first public 
schoolhouse on the west side of the town, on land now 
owned by Peleg Gardner, Esq., on Claverick Street, 
and to the amusement of many placed it in a sort of 
bowl, the hill rising six or eight feet above the sill on 
every side. He gave as his reason that in a brief time 
the growth and convenience of the town would demand 
that the hill should be dug away, — a prediction ful- 
filled within ten years. To the material interests of 
the town he also gave a cheerful service, and, as com- 
mander of the United Train of Artiller}^, contributed 
his share to the martial spirit of the day. 

Mr. Reynolds was one of twelve who established a 
private Insurance Association, which, in 1799, was 
merged in the Washington Insurance Company. The 
first directors of this institution were Richard Jackson, 
Jr., Jabez Bullock, Amos Thropp, Joseph Tilling- 
hast, Thomas Jackson, Grindall Reynolds, Ebenezer 
Macomber, George Benson, Wheeler Martin, Samuel 
Aborn, Jr., Abner Daggett, Charles Sheldon, and 
George Jackson. Of this board, Richard Jackson, 
Jr. was elected President, and George Benson, Secre- 
tary. For the years of the separate existence of the 
private company, Mr. Reynolds was its sole agent, 
and apparently chief manager. While it continued it 
seems to have had eminent success. In the early votes 
of this body is a clause instructing the agent not to 
insure vessels which were to be employed in the slave 
trade. 

In 1808, Mr. Reynolds removed to Boston, though it 
was not until late in life that he altogether relinquished 



426 MEMOIR OF GRINDALL REYNOLDS, SENIOR. 

the hope of returning to Providence. From 1814 to 
1818 he resided at Stratford, Vermont, and had charge 
of the manufacturing department of the Vermont Cop- 
peras Company. In the latter year he was appointed 
manufacturing agent of the Franconia Iron Company, 
and for ten years gave himself to this work. In 1828 
he returned to Boston. Seven years later, in his 
eighty-first year, he fell and was made a cripple for the 
rest of his life. He died, May 8, 1847, at the ad- 
vanced age of ninety-one years and six months, retain- 
ing to the last an unbroken and unclouded intellect. In 
accordance with his expressed wish, his remains were 
brought to Providence, and when the graveyard of the 
First Congregational Society, of which he had been an 
influential member, was removed, they, with the dust of 
the loved ones who had many years before been taken 
from him, were transferred to Swan Point Cemetery. 
He was married three times, viz. : in 1780, to Abigail 
Rhoadcs, of Providence, who died in 1789, preceded 
to the grave by three of her children; in 1795, to 
Mehitable Russell, of the same place, who lived only a 
few years, her only child dying before her; in 1820, to 
Cynthia Kendall, who with her three children is still 
living. One of the number, Rev. Crindall Reynolds, 
is pastor of the First Congi-egational Church and 
Society in Concord, Mass. 

Mr. Reynolds cherished to the close of life a tender 
attachment to his native State, and to the city where 
his youth and mature years were spent. It afforded 
him great pleasure to converse upon the occurrences of 
former days, and to recall the names and persons of 
those with whom he had then been familiar. The 
occasional visits of a relative residing here were made 
by him a conversational jubilee. In person he was 



MEMOIR or GRINDALL REYNOLDS, SENIOR. 427 

tall, well formed, and of commanding presence; in 
manners, grave and courteous ; in friendship, reliable ; 
in counsel, trustworthy. He was a man of strong 
native powers, improved by extensive reading and 
much reflection. He had a respectable knowledge of 
the French and Latin languages, acquired after he was 
fifty years of age. He had a fixed religious faith, 
founded upon the Bible, and has left behind him an 
honored name for unbending truth and rectitude. 



THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 

October 4, 1868. 
Give me any plague but the plague of the heart. 

ECCLESIASTICUS XXV. 13. 

OUR troubles in this world may with propriety be 
divided into two classes ; — first, the burdens 
which God gives us to bear ; and second, the burdens 
which we give ourselves to bear. First, there are bur- 
dens which God gives us to bear. Without undertaking 
to decide how far the griefs and disappointments of 
life grow out of a general providence regulating the 
great features of human discipline, and to what de- 
gree they are the result of a special providence fitting 
the private experience to the personal need, — without 
entering into that question at all, — this we can con- 
fidently assert, that a very considerable share of man s 
burdens have their origin in causes largely, if not en- 
tirely, beyond his control. They are the result of the 
constitution of things. They are caused by the frail 
and perishable nature of the human body. They exist 
because mortal minds are finite, and the best spiritual 
perceptions limited. Or they spring out of the relations 
of friendship and society in which we are placed. Here 
are a few illustrations. 

A man is in business and prosperous ; he conducts his 
affairs honestly and prudently ; and lias a fair share of 
foresight and enterprise. But commercial interests gen- 



THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 429 

erally get into an unhealthy condition. There is a crisis 
in the mercantile world. And this merchant with many 
others fails and loses all the results of years of hard 
and honest labor. We call this God's burden. Not that 
we mean to assert that God directly imposed it, or that 
there is no human element in the causes which are be- 
hind it. But simply that no ordinary prudence, that is, 
no prudence that we have a right to demand, would have 
enabled the man to avoid bearing it. 

A farmer plants his fields with the best seed which 
he can procure, and at the right season. He is no slug- 
gard either. He rises early and tills faithfully the soil. 
All through the sultry summer even to the harvest he is 
at his post and active. But a drought parches the soil 
and makes the crop scanty and unremunerative ; or 
some army worm destroys it just when the hopes of the 
husbandman are brightest. These troubles are outside 
our control. They are not to be averted by any probable 
sagacity and toil. 

One instance more. A person is afflicted with a pain- 
ful and chronic sickness, so that you are wellnigh sure 
he will be an invalid all his days. You look back over 
the past conduct of such a one. He has been a man of 
good habits, temperate and industrious. He has taken 
at least the usual care of his health. Perhaps his origi- 
nal constitution was at fault ; perhaps he was subjected 
to some unforeseen or unavoidable exposure ; perhaps 
such were the conditions of his lot that he was obliged 
to work too hard, too constantly. At any rate, looking 
fairly at his trouble, you cannot say that he brought it 
upon himself. It really was the result of causes beyond 
his control. 

The number of these illustrations might be indefinitely 
increased. For no one considering candidly human life 



430 THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 

can doubt that there is in it an element of burden, of 
grief, of bereavement, which had its origin back of the 
individual well-doing or evil-doing. This we call God's 
burden. Not, we repeat, that we affirm that any special 
evil is directly and immediately laid upon man by God. 
But that as much as this is certainly true : that life is full 
of troubles, which have their roots back of the private 
purpose and act in that general order of tilings whose 
first source is God. 

There are then troubles which we may in a very proper 
sense call God's burdens. Tliere are other troubles which 
we may with equal propriety entitle man's burdens, the 
burdens which he needlessly puts on his own shoulders, 
the evils which would never afflict him if he conducted 
his life according to the plain dictates of wisdom and an 
enlightened conscience ; inconveniences and griefs, in 
short, which are the direct results of an unwise or wicked 
indulgence of one's passions and appetites. The seat of 
these burdens is in a person's own heart. They are, not 
the plague of circumstance, not the plague of God's 
Providence, but the plague of the heart, more to be 
shunned and feared than any other loss or suffering. It 
is very easy, too, to find examples of this kind of burden 
bearing. 

I know people who started life with at least average 
opportunities. They had strong health, good intellects, 
and a respectable education. They embarked in profit- 
able business, and formed pleasant connections in life. 
But for years they have been growing more poor and 
miserable, — shabby in person, bloated and tremulous in 
body, confused and incapable in mind, coarse and sensual 
of heart. The home shares the general wretchedness. 
The house is dilapidated, the table scantily spread, 



THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 431 

the children ragged, the wife full of fears and unspeak- 
able sorrows. I know and everybody knows the one 
cause of all this. These people have not exercised a 
proper self-control. They have indulged the appetite 
for strong drink until it has become incontrollable. 
Their lower nature has the mastery over the nobler part 
of them. What do you call this misery ? God's bur- 
den ? Is it not the plague whose roots are in a man's 
own heart ? 

Here again is another, who is always in hot water, as 
we say ; at odds with half his little world ; a neighbor- 
in-law to the whole neighborhood. Even with his own 
family he lives in a sort of armed neutrality. One need 
not add that the life of such a one is a miserable and 
unsatisfactory kind of life. But what is the origin of 
the misery ? Some peculiarity of surroundings and re- 
lations for which nobody in particular is accountable ? 
Not at all. The trouble is the plague of the heart. It 
is a want of any just self-restraint permitting the growth 
of a surly, unreasonable, fault-finding temper, which is 
an equal curse to its owner, to his immediate friends, 
and to the community in general. 

It is easy to multiply examples. Everybody who 
cherishes a discontented temper, and learns to look at 
life with morbid eyes, until he finds nothing but dis- 
comforts in a good lot, has the plague of the heart. 
Everybody who, in his thirst for gain or place, despises 
the sanctions of truth and justice, so that his neighbors 
and the world withdraw their confidence from him, has 
the plague of the heart. Everybody who loves money 
until he sells all that he has to get it, — his sympathies, 
his charity, his public spirit, — and becomes a miserable 
miser, the object of general contempt, has the plague 
of the heart. In short, any burden, deprivation, or suf- 



432 THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 

fering in life, whose real cause is a want of fidelity to 
the principles of purity, truth, and love, is a plague of 
the heart. Any sin or folly which exists because of our 
own evil counsels, and because of our want of good 
counsels, and which will cease to exist the moment we 
square our conduct by the laws of God and the moni- 
tions of conscience, — anything of that sort, any evil of 
our own creating, — that is a plague of the heart. 

What reason now is there why the plague of the heart, 
the evil which is of our own creating, should be given 
such pre-eminence over those great natural calamities, 
such as pain and sickness and poverty and bereavement, 
of which we usually make such account ? Why should 
the wise man reverse the ordinary modes of thinking 
and feeling, and say, " Give me any plague but the 
plague of the heart " ? Who is right ? We who think 
so much of the calamities which are outside our souls, 
and so little of the troubles which are growing up in our 
souls ? Or he who counted every other grief inconsider- 
able beside the grief of bad passions or a bad heart ? 

One reason why the plague of the heart is the greatest 
of plagues is on the surface. It is a plague of the heart, 
— it is something which is our own fault, and for which 
we alone are responsible. Other griefs may be very 
heavy, very sorrowful. They may be of such a nature 
as to break up all our plans of life, and put a sense of 
vacancy into all our usual haunts and occupations. But 
we are not obliged to bear our burden ourselves. We 
can cast it upon the Lord. There is this comfort 
always, our grief is not of our own making. Its roots 
are in the counsels of God. It is somehow a part of a 
great, loving plan. It is somehow a blessing. So any 
one who suffers a great stroke of misfortune, while he 



THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 433 

is walking in the plain path of duty, has a right to look 
to God for support. But you have the plague of the 
heart. You walk contrary to God's law. You trample 
upon the truth. You indulge your appetites. You 
slander your neighbor. You do anything which is not 
right. And then you take the whole responsibility of 
your conduct. If your wrong works badly, you cannot 
look anywhere for sympathy, to man or God. This 
plague of the heart isolates you and leaves you alone 
with an outraged conscience. 

There is another reason akin to the last why the 
plague of the heart is the worst plague. It puts us into 
collision with our own moral nature, with our conscience. 
It is not so with God's burden. It may be a very heavy 
burden. It may be sickness filling our life with bodily 
pain. It may be adversity giving us the daily discom- 
forts of poverty. It may be bereavement taking away 
the light of the household. But however heavy and 
however grievous, it lacks that sharpest sting, self- 
reproach. But the man who has acted basely has lost 
his self-respect. It does not matter what anybody else 
says or does, he can do only one of two things, forget 
his own conduct, or condemn his own conduct. When 
now you consider how large a part of every man's life 
is solitary life, how many thoughts, feelings, and hopes 
there are concerning which he can enter into no part- 
nership, how many joys and griefs with which no 
stranger can intermeddle, you can understand what a 
burden it is to be at war with your own conscience. 

But do you not perceive instantly the infinite differ- 
ence which that one word or that one fact — crime — 
would have made in the experience of an honest man ? 
It is the very thing which divides an apostle in a Roman 
jail lifting songs of praise to God from a convict filling 

28 



434 THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 

his cell with curses or peopling it with remorse. It is 
the very thing which separates a martyr going up to 
heaven in a chariot of fire from a murderer expiating 
his crime on the gallows. Sin ! Crime ! small words 
these, and easily spoken. Change them to sinless, crime- 
less, and the difference to the ear is little. But the 
change marks infinite inward distinctions. It matters 
not whether the sin be great or small, for one of the 
essential differences always, everywhere, between God's 
burden and the plague of the heart is the possession 
or the loss of our self-respect. 

One more distinction. When the immediate pain 
of God's burden has passed away, the after consequences 
are, or should be, altogether good ; while the worst 
results of the plague of the heart are in the future, and 
not in the present. You suffer in one way or another 
a great grief, pain it may be, earthly loss possibly, a 
terrible bereavement perhaps. But whatever it is, the 
eternal fact is, " No chastening for the present seemeth 
joyous, but grievous ; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth 
the peaceable fruit of righteousness." Your burden was 
intended by God to help you in the deepest and best way, 
— to make you richer in your spiritual part. And if you 
receive your trial aright, it will certainly happen that 
your faith and your religious principle will be purified 
and quickened, and your life with God and your vision 
of heaven become more real. By no means is it true 
that the life which has had great misfortunes, or 
known the most solemn bereavements, is necessarily 
an unhappy life. Often it has the serenest peace. Often 
it is filled fullest with useful and contenting deeds. So 
many a Christian character, rich in all the fruits of faith 
and purity, has been ripened in the fiery heat of afflic- 
tion. So many an experience, most truly good to have. 



THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 435 

and most satisfying to look back upon, has had its clouds 
as well as its sunshine, — its crosses before its crown. 

But the worst thing about the plagues of the heart 
is not in any outward momentary evil, but in the 
future which they corrupt, and in the heart itself which 
they have debased. Plagues of the heart are not simply 
ugly facts in the present, but vicious habits wiiich are 
self-perpetuating. You are a drunkard. What is the 
worst penalty of your fault ? Is it that to-day you and 
your family are poor and miserable ? Is it that now 
the health of body and mind suffer ? Or rather is it 
not that the plague is in your heart ? Is it not that a 
law of evil is written in body and soul ? That you have 
a habit, a tendency, which for these years will be just 
so much power of darkness to struggle with ? You 
are a cheat. What have you worst to fear ? The ill 
opinion of men ? Or that the fair form of truth will 
be so obliterated in your heart that you will have no 
instinct to choose truth rather than falsehood? You 
indulge in vulgarity. Is the only penalty that you lose 
the society of pure and refined people ? Or that your 
own soul gets full of impurity, that your mind gets a 
vulgar tone, that coarse language and language wdiich 
borders on indecency drops naturally from your lips ? 

This is the most important distinction of all. God's 
burden is an outward affliction touching, and with our 
consent purifying the heart. The plague of the heart 
is an inward vice working outward in daily corruption 
of manners and life. God's burden is a blessing in dis- 
guise. The plague of the heart is sometimes a seem- 
ing blessing, but always a real curse. 

You see then that it was not a fanciful and imagina- 
tive predominance which the wise man ascribed to the 



436 THE PLAGUE OF THE HEART. 

plague of the heart. If we could get at the root of 
things, we should find that there was no other plague 
which is a plague at all. Any one who understands 
human nature takes up this same word of ancient 
wisdom : " Give me any plague but the plague of the 
heart. Give me any evil but an evil of my own creat- 
ing. Give me any cross which docs not take me out 
of the ranks of those children of God who are walking 
beneath the light of his countenance. Give me any 
plague but that plague of sin and passion which creates 
a whole world of thought and feeling upon which God's 
blessing cannot be called down." Especially ought ev- 
ery young man or woman to say, " Give me any plague 
but the plague of the heart. Do anything you will 
with me but fasten upon my young life an evil tendency 
or vicious habit which shall perpetuate itself and cast 
a dark shadow over all the bright coming years." And 
everybody should repeat, " Save me from the plague 
of the heart. Let God make what lie will of me, or 
appoint any sharpness of discipline, so long as in every 
event I can seek his benediction, so long as I have a 
good conscience to sustain me." 



WELLS OF BACA. 

September 28, 1879. 

Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well. 
Psalm Ixxxiv. 6. 

WHAT is the outward fact behind this picture of 
the Psalmist ? A little circle of sand, or else 
a long stony depression, treeless, verdureless, waterless, 
panting and scorching beneath the blazing rays of an 
Oriental sun. Treeless, verdureless, because waterless. 
The valley of Baca ! The valley of weeping ! One of 
the hundred arid spots which dot the wilderness south 
of Jerusalem ! To this spot enterprise and benevolence 
come. They scoop up the sand. They dig down to the 
perpetual springs. Then you have an ever flowing well, 
— the chief blessing in the desert. Soon the palms 
send up their feathery shade. Green things cover the 
yellow sand. The Arab pitches his tent, and pastures 
his flocks, and pursues his simple husbandry. For death 
you have life ; for desolation beauty ; for solitude the 
pleasant voices of women and children. 

Such an event leaves a permanent record in the an- 
nals of primitive races. Across the vast space of forty 
centuries it is remembered that Isaac dug a well at 
Beersheba, and that Jacob left to his children one at 
Sychar as a precious legacy. In our day the French, in 
the sterile country south of Algiers, have sent down 
Artesian wells. And as the water came gushing forth, 



438 WELLS OF BACA. 

the Bedouins heaped blessings upon the workmen. And 
soon around these new diamonds of the desert peaceful 
villages gathered. You see, then, what an immense 
physical change and benefit the single line " who pass- 
ing through the valley of Baca make it a well " de- 
scribes, and what a striking moral symbol it may 
become. 

What is the lesson which David makes the symbol 
teach ? The necessity and value of moral and spiritual 
well-digging ; that, if we are to go from strength to 
strength, we must have the power, and the disposition, 
and the tendency, to go beneath what is hard, sterile, 
and desert-like in the facts of our living to the spiritual 
meaning and discipline beneath them ; that, if life is 
to have any sweetness and worth, we must carry about 
with us that sunny Christian temper which transforms 
all burdens, all worriments, and all strifes. That we 
are poor and miserable, if we have not a faith which looks 
beyond pain, or disappointment, or grief, or any of the 
other trials which make life seem at times only a vale 
of tears. Just this is what we need in the private expe- 
rience. Far be it from me to say or intimate that 
human life, as a whole, can be symbolized truly by a 
desert. I believe no such thing. Most of us walk for 
the larger part of our mortal round in green valleys and 
fertile plains, — unspeakably pleasant, full of comfort, 
full of harmony, full of beautiful and tender relations. 
Yet we have our valleys of Baca. We have our hard 
experiences. Sometimes we come face to face with 
cruel facts of disease, of adversity, of misapprehension, 
of loneliuess. Or if we escape the more striking burdens, 
then our life in its monotony, in this very want of any- 
thing remarkable to do or bear, wearies us. Nothino: 



WELLS OF BACA. 439 

comes which seems to demand any great faith or heroism, 
or spiritual resources ; each day is so common, so un- 
eventful, so like the last, and so much the pattern and 
mould of future days, that our life in its easiness 
becomes almost tiresome. How often we see lives 
which have in them all the elements of goodness made 
wellnigh valleys of weeping, because they that live them 
will brood over some inexplicable stripe of darkness 
which has fallen athwart the general brightness ! How 
sometimes we see men and women, who have a whole 
world of happiness left them, grow unduly sad and 
morbid, because of some heavy bereavement, which 
neither you, nor I, nor anybody with only mortal ken, 
can fully understand! How many fail to find any moral 
incitement, any spiritual lessons, any deep wisdom, in 
the common round, in the plodding business, in the stag- 
nant home life ! These are the arid spots we all find. 
These are the desert valleys we all have to pass through 
to reach any spiritual Jerusalem. Nobody's life is made 
so that it shall always be clear of pain or grief, or solitude, 
or monotony. Do you ask, " Why ?" Who can tell ? 
What we need is to be able to dig wells. The great 
blessing is to know how to go beneath what for the time 
being may be the stony or bitter facts of our personal 
life, and find their spiritual meaning and use. That is 
what we all need, this divining power, — this ever pres- 
ent capacity, amid all discipline, to hear a voice speaking 
to the moral nature, and to see, amid every maze, the 
road which leads up to noble Christian manhood, — this 
prophet's power to smite the rock, that out of it may 
flow water of life. 

To dig wells is what we need in social relations. 
What can be more inexpressibly dreary than social life, 



440 WELLS OF BACA. 

if it be only a scene of selfish scrambling, or of injustice 
and impurity ? What stony desert can be more repul- 
sive than that human life, which, amid all the needs, 
joys, sorrows, affections, and hopes about it, is caring 
only for itself, — to gather all the comforts, to occupy 
uU the places, to enjoy all the pleasures, to amass all 
the wealth, — let come what will of the rest? What 
Sahara, burning beneath the rays of an unclouded sun, 
more blasted than that heart which is full of hard preju- 
dices and bitter grudges, which does not know how to for- 
give and forget, which makes haste to repay an injury, 
which prides itself in the thought that it is a good 
hater ? All the discomfort of human relations comes 
out of this temper of mind, — out of mortal selfishness 
and bitterness. We need to find some better way of 
walking with our neighbors. 

The art of wise and noble living, the truest use of 
religion, is found in moral well-digging ; — that is, in 
the tendency and power to discern beneath this outward 
something better than itself ; the tendency and power 
to discern, through faith and spiritual apprehension, in 
the dullest routine of life, in its heavy sorrows, in its 
selfish relations, something more than monotony, or 
grief, or self-seeking, — even trust, tenderness, and 
wisdom, and so ever-flowing fountains of spiritual life, 
making all our discipline sweet, fruitful, and imiting. 
Blessed is the man who can dig wells in the valley of 
Baca! Blessed he who has the sensitive divining-rod 
to point beneath the strata of our daily necessities to 
inexhaustible moral fountains ! Blessed he who can 
pour streams of love and good will through all the 
channels made dry and barren by human selfishness I 
There is no other art which pays so large a dividend 
of character for ourselves, or of comfort for others. 



WELLS OF BACA. 441 

He who has it goes from strength to strength. All 
paths, bright or gloomy, for him lead up. He has the 
magician's wand. The hut becomes a palace. Life's 
common paths all go through Eden. Each man or 
woman is a child of God. The text is but a symbol. 
Certainly. But it is a symbol of what is profoundly 
needful and eminently practical in your life and mine. 

Is it not true that the power of moral well-digging is 
the greatest of blessings ? Let us inquire. Here are 
two homes. One is full of disorder, ill temper, and 
divisions, — and so of bad training and influence. In 
the other all goes on smoothly. There is no friction, 
no collision, but in their place mutual love and for- 
bearance, — and so you have a home where souls grow 
truer and tenderer. What now makes the difference ? 
Not the houses these dwell in ; for they are alike. 
Not the comforts ; they are equal. Not the burdens ; 
they are similar. But because in one love and patience 
have dug beneath the sameness of home life, and found 
the divine reason why God sets the solitary in families, 
and not in hermit cells. 

Two boys go out from quiet country homes to the 
city's bustle and enterprise. From the same school and 
church. From the same neighborhood society, and the 
same scenes of tranquil beauty. From similar influences, 
so far as we can see, at home and abroad. And one 
goes from strength to strength. An honest boy, he be- 
comes an honest man. A merchant prince always, if 
not in the great business he builds up, or the great 
wealth he achieves, certainly in his integrity without a 
spot. The waves of temptation may swell around him, 
but they do not touch the ermine of his character. 
The other goes down and not up. From the beginning 



442 WELLS OF BACA. 

he takes every mean advantage. He sails every voyage 
as closely as the law will allow to the rocks and shoals 
of dishonest practices. All his life long he is growing 
more selfish, more unprincipled, and so less deserving 
of your respect, — rich possibly in everything but good 
works. You in vain seek the cause of this difference in 
outward circumstances. It does not originate there. 
Honest men and knaves have come out of all ranks and 
all conditions of experience. He who holds fast to his 
integrity has gone below that poor surface sagacity, 
which says the end of living is selfish advancement, 
and reached the eternal wisdom, which declares that the 
end of living is character. 

A great affliction comes to one man. It makes him 
downcast, gloomy, almost morose. Elasticity is taken 
out of him. To him life seems hardly worth living. 
He does not see why he of all men should have so heavy 
a burden to bear. Trial does not make him stronger, as 
we like to think, but weaker. It not so much refines 
his character as clogs his activity and destroys his use- 
fulness. An equal burden comes to another. In every 
manifestation of life you trace the refining influence. 
The dross seems to be all burnt out of him, and nothing 
but pure gold left. In the future the selfish and earthly 
considerations shall have no such power as in the past. 
You can only explain these diverse results by under- 
standing that one has gone below the external fact of 
loss and found infinite wisdom to rest upon, — and the 
other has not. These illustrations do not come from 
far. They are drawn out of the stock of our common 
experience. All about us are men and women who, 
from a discipline in all essentials similar, have won 
the most divergent spiritual qualities ; — weakness and 
strength, — doubt and trust, — petulance and patience, — 



WELLS OF BACA. 443 

knavery and rectitude, — malevolence and benevolence. 
What we have to say to these varying results from the 
same or similar influences is this. All unsatisfactory 
character is the consequence of a too constant regard 
for what is on the surface of life. All valuable char- 
acter is the result largely of a process of spiritual deep- 
ening. They go from strength to strength who dig 
wells in the valley of Baca. They build up strong and 
saintly characters, who make their pains, their grief, and 
their loneliness the occasions for searching more deeply 
into the reality of things. 

To pass through valleys of Baca is a necessary part 
of the human lot. To die as well as to be born, to suf- 
fer as well as to enjoy, to be disappointed as well as to 
succeed, appears to be in the scheme of things. At 
any rate no one has yet finished his career without 
sooner or later experiencing both sides, the dark and 
the bright, of human experience. So we shall have to 
accept the appointment, — valleys of Baca ! valleys of 
weeping ! painful bodies ! broken hopes ! solitary homes ! 
poverty ! exile ! — just as it shall come in that mighty 
plan or counsel we call God's Providence. We have 
no power to change that. What we can do is to dig 
wells. We can go from the apparent to the real ; from 
the physical fact to the spiritual use. Life can be deep- 
ened till it drinks at the never failing fountains. 

When Abraham, passing through the valley, dug a 
well, at which after forty centuries the desert wanderer 
yet quenches his thirst, he conferred a lasting blessing. 
But when that same Abraham, going beneath the arid 
and shallow beliefs of his day, found and handed down 
to all times and races a faith in the one living God, he 
conferred a blessing in whose presence the other fades 
into insignificance. For really to dig a well, to get to 



444 WELLS OF BACA. 

the spiritual essence of things, is the greatest and most 
sacred of mortal achievements. 

Nowhere did Jesus more profoundly state the end of 
his word and work than in that w^onderful conversation 
with the woman of Samaria. " The water that I shall 
give him shall be in him a well of water springing up 
unto everlasting life." So — as the great teacher saw 
it and taught it — Christianity is not simply the creed 
we accept, or the covenant we profess, or the ritual we 
observe. It is the spring of eternal life and truth which 
it opens in our own hearts ; the moral principles it 
strengthens until they have power to guide and control 
us ; the spiritual faitli with which it fills us until it 
quickens and inspires us. That is, it is what truth was 
to Abraham, what it was to David, what it was to Jesus, 
what it is to every good man, what all truth truly re- 
ceived must be, — a well of water springing up into 
everlasting life, in what else might be a desert of 
selfish and ignoble hopes, making character rich and 
fruitful 



BUT. 

April 4, 1880. 

Naaman, captain of the host of the King of Syria, was a great 
man with his master, and honorable, because by him the Lord had given 
deliverance unto Syria; he was also a mighty man in valor, — but he 
was a leper. — 2 Kings v. 1. 

A WONDERFUL picture of great prosperity, dark- 
ened by a single shadow ! Rendered too, as all 
Bible pictures are, without a wasted stroke ! Here was 
one who seemed to have everything earth could give, — 
courage and military skill to rank him with the fore- 
most, good fortune to make his courage and skill his 
country's deliverance. Favorite of a monarch ! idol of 
the people ! you can readily supply all the narrative 
omits. You see him riding proudly through the streets 
of Damascus, — heads bowing in reverence, shouts fill- 
ing the air. You can follow him to the court, and 
behold him sitting on the right hand of power. On 
that green emerald, which the plain of Abana and 
Pharpar was, you can almost restore his palaces, his 
gardens, and his equipages. All these things Naaman 
had, — all that ambition could hope for. 

But ! There was one limitation. That most terrible 
of diseases, the curse of the ancient East, leprosy, had 
fastened upon him. What now were all earthly gifts 
worth ? What proud victory, or the favor of a mon- 
arch, or the praise of men, or multiplied luxuries ? A 
great man and honorable, — but — a leper. Brightest 



446 BUT. 

sunshine in total eclipse ! I can recollect how this story 
of a lifetime, compressed into a verse, struck me even in 
my boyhood. 

Yet, after all, except in the extremeness of its reverse, 
was the experience of Naaman so very different from the 
course of other lives ? Is there not a " but" in every lot ? 
A limitation ? Something which darkens the light ? 
Something which sobers the joy ? Something which, if 
it does not make living a burden or full of sorrow, cer- 
tainly does teach us that God has put into the most 
fortunate lot other elements and graver than simple 
gratification of our wishes, or the perfect accomplish- 
ment of our plans ? We talk as though the clouds were 
only with the poor, the sick, and the unfortunate ; the 
sunshine with everybody else. No doubt we think so. 
Perhaps, however, if we could go into the homes of the 
rich, or if we could look into the hearts of the prosper- 
ous, or if we could know all the thoughts of the strong 
and vigorous, we should find the " but " all the same. 
We should learn, possibly to our surprise, that few people 
get through life without seeing both sides of it, the dark 
and the bright. It was the remark of a person of wide 
experience and keen observation, that the rarest thing 
in the world is a man or woman in possession of abso- 
lute health. People might appear on casual observation 
perfectly well. But look deeper. There may be some 
inherited trouble, or a weak joint or limb, or some vital 
organ has given way under the strain of too heavy and 
too constant toil. And even when they think them- 
selves to be well, just as likely as not the next month 
or the next year shows them that they are mistaken. 
That is, in respect to the health and vigor of the 
physical frame, limitation is the rule rather than the 
exception. 



BUT. 447 

Suppose now we pass from the physical to the moral 
frame, and use the story of Naaman as a figure to ex- 
press the spiritual condition of men and women. What 
is the real deficiency in the character of these ? Have 
they no genuine spiritual prosperity ? Are they in no 
proper sense morally great and honorable ? Do you 
find them quite destitute of good qualities, — so that 
there are no elements whatever in them of a better 
life ? In short, is the record of the life lived about us, 
by our friends, by our acquaintances, by our neighbors, 
simply a painful and unsatisfactory, if not shameful 
record ? Of course not. Life in town or hamlet in 
which such moral destitution is would be unendurable. 
But in fact the average man or woman has a thousand 
good qualities. He may have, despite his faults, much 
moral earnestness, and make considerable progress in 
self-control and self-culture. He may, and probably 
will, do a great deal of good in the world. It were a 
libel upon God and experience to doubt it. All whole- 
sale talk about human depravity has its foundation in 
pure theory. It may furnish material on which to build 
a dogma. But as a practical statement it falls power- 
less. Men look into their own hearts, or they observe 
the lives of others. They know that no such entire 
moral destitution exists. Nay, you may come into 
contact with the worst specimens of character which 
the life around you has to furnish. To your astonish- 
ment, sometimes you will find in these untrustworthy, 
coarse, and passionate characters qualities to like, qual- 
ities even to respect. So when you stand by their open 
graves, without any hypocrisy, and without any hiding 
of their great faults, there are pleasant things to re- 
member and kindly words to say. 

Entire destitution of good is therefore rarely the 



448 BUT. 

moral difficulty with human beings. There are a great 
many men and women everywhere who are good and 
honorable, and full of honest purpose. There are very 
few men and women of whom you can affirm absolute 
lack of good. The difficulty is the limitation, — the 
weak spot in the armor, — the bosom error or sin. 
The trouble is the selfish streak, the worldly stain, the 
grasping disposition, the untrutliful habit, the passion- 
ate temper, the base appetite, the unforgiving and un- 
forgetting mind, the cruel prejudice; — something which 
is wrong amid much which is right ; — something which 
is a species of moral leprosy that eats into good cliar- 
acter and good purpose, as rust eats into the fine steel 
and takes away its brightness and its keen edge. That 
is what is lamentable and depressing in average human 
character. Not that there is nothing to love and re- 
spect, — But ! But ! ! We all know what weaknesses, 
what errors, what wrongful feelings and habits of life, 
are expressed by that dubious "but." You do not 
have to look far off to see that all this is true. Here 
is one who is not in the very texture of his soul upright. 
There are such in every community, — men and women 
whose desires are more vigorous than their consciences. 
At first you do not notice their fault. They appear to 
be well intentioned and friendly ; and they are. But as 
they go on in life the moral stress comes, and their 
inherent weakness makes itself manifest. As the in- 
dulgences they crave are found to be hard to get hon- 
estly, the unstable integrity gives way entirely. They 
prey unblushingly upon their neighbor. This is one 
specimen of character ; — good with a fatal limitation ; 
— good with a " but." 

Take another common example. You say of a mnn 
that he is his own worst enemy. What do you mean ? 



BUT. 449 

This. That when he is himself he is full of the milk of 
human kindness. That when he is under the dominion 
of his better part he is a good neighbor, a good friend, 
a good liusband and father. But he is very often not 
himself, and not under the dominion of his better part. 
Often he is subject to a base and degrading appetite. 
Then he is of no use but to make miserable those who 
are nearest to him. This is another common specimen 
of character : a good and honorable man, but — a leper. 
And what are the goodness, and the honorableness, and 
even the attractiveness worth, when there is no self- 
control behind them ? These huts, these moral limita- 
tions in human character, are wellnigii innumerable. 
We meet them everywhere. One man is of such a 
jealous disposition, so suspicious of your motives, so on 
the lookout for injury, so prompt to resent, that all 
intercourse with him is like walking on the edge of a 
volcano. Another is so coarse and vulgar in thought 
and speech, he so lards his conversation with strange 
oaths, that his very presence is an offence to pure and 
reverent feeling. Another is so a creature of this world, 
so engrossed by the cares and pleasures of it, that what 
we call the higher life of man has no meaning to him. 
Another loves money so much, and devotes himself so 
entirely to the winning of it, and the amassing of it, that 
his sympathies cool and his generosity dies. Still an- 
other has such a passionate temper, that crossing his 
will is like encountering a wild beast. 

These and countless others of a different stamp are 
in the main good and honorable men and women. They 
have a great many qualities which we like and respect. 
In some aspects their characters have real moral dig- 
nity. When you get on the right side, it is pleasant to 
walk with them. Still, they have their limitations, their 

29 



450 BUT. 

weaknesses. "When we speak of them in the most chari- 
table way, we come to a place where we have to say 
" but." Is not that the very thing we often are obliged 
to say of characters which are in the main very noble ? 
Generous, — but. Honest, — but. Pure, — but. On the 
one side, great winning qualities; qualities which are full 
of usefulness ; qualities which get, and deserve to get, 
our sincere respect. On the other side, the fault, the 
limitation, the quality which we do not like to talk about, 
the quality which narrows the field of usefulness and 
spoils the good example. This is the simple portraiture 
of how much life everywhere ! 

Whoever desires to establish for himself a great and 
trustworthy character must fasten his attention first 
upon the " but," and devote his efforts to the removal 
of his moral limitation. Amid all that is good in him, 
he must consider most what is not good, what in fact is 
neither helpful nor respectable. We are apt to pursue 
an opposite course. We count up our virtues ; not per- 
haps in set form, but in fact. Here are truth and 
honor ! Here are pure thoughts and speech ! Here are 
lips which never slander, and feet which never stray in 
forbidden paths ! Great virtues these ! Will they not 
cover up our one little fault, our one venial sin, so that 
it shall not be counted against us, but be blotted out 
forever from the Book of Remembrance ? 

Observe now that we do not reason in this way about 
anything else. You examine your ship which you are 
about to send forth on a long voyage. You do not count 
up her sound timbers. No: you seek for the worm-eaten 
plank, or the defective spar, or the untrustworthy rope 
or sail, and replace these things which are weak by what 
you know to be strong. Then you feel that you have 



BUT. 451 

done your duty, and that you can honestly send forth the 
ship and its brave crew to encounter the perils of the 
deep. You go out into your orchard with pruning-knife 
and saw, to see what you can do to promote a good crop. 
Inevitably you look for the dead boughs and the super- 
fluous branches ; that is, for such malformation or such 
redundance as make for weakness and not for strength. 
You summon your doctor. He does not ask you where 
you are well, but where you are sick. He seeks to find 
out Mdiat is the real cause of this pain or this languor, 
or this irritation. Now that in everything of human 
concern but cliaracter wise men pay such attention to 
the "but," — to the imperfection, — of itself suggests 
that it may be well to do the same with character 
also. 

Well and wise, let us add, not simply because it is 
the way men act in other matters of importance, but 
because so doing we are on the high road to self-knowl- 
edge ; and we do not really get any trustworthy self- 
knowledge simply by counting up our good qualities. 
In many cases the virtues whereof we boast are hardly 
our own. They come to us not so much because we 
have consciously striven to possess them as because we 
were born in a Christian land, or they are ours through 
the shaping influence of an education which we could 
not direct, or they have been cast for us in the moulds 
of public opinion. For these qualities, common to our 
age and race, we are scarcely to be credited. Knowing 
them alone, we do not know the individual hue and 
tendency of our lives. 

But our fault is apt to be our personal possession, — 
that which we have cherished. It is the very quality 
which differentiates us from other people. You call a 
man a miser. You do not mean that that is all the 



452 BUT. 

moral quality he has i that he may not be honest and 
pure, or a great many other things which are creditable. 
But his personal stamp is miser. The quality he has 
cherished is love of money. This moral limitation is 
the most intensely personal thing about him. It is what 
people will remember long after he is dead, remember 
when his virtues are clean forgotten. Just so we remem- 
ber Peter's fickleness and Martha's worldliness and 
Thomas's doubt. 

Not only is the '' but " — the fault — apt to be in a pe- 
culiar sense a personal quality, but it is a quality which 
is pretty sure to work, if not more powerfully, certainly 
more noticeably than all the rest. So long as the 
stream keeps in its appointed channels, it flows on and 
on, a mighty force no doubt for good. Still you hardly 
notice it. But when it begins to fret its banks, it cuts 
and cuts with ever increasing rapidity, until, all barriers 
swept away, it pours a devastating flood over rich fields 
and peaceful homes. So is it with a fault. Unnoticed, 
left to work out its proper results, ofttimes it destroys 
all the banks virtue has raised, and floods the character 
with evil. It is this corrupting, this corroding tendency 
and power of all marked faults, at which we pause with 
an ominous " but," which make it imperative that we 
should carefully watch and sternly repress them. If a 
fault stood unrelated to the general character, if it was 
like a blemish or a knot in your board which will not 
spread, it might be of less consequence. But how often 
does a fault stand thus unrelated ? Did you ever know 
a man steadily to indulge in any gross appetites and not 
grow base in more ways than one ? One of the most 
remarkable romances ever written is " The Scarlet Let- 
ter." And one of the most striking chapters in it is 
that which depicts the steady moral deterioration of a 



BUT. 453 

truly good man under the thirst for revenge. We say- 
that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. We can 
say, with perhaps equal truth, that in the long run char- 
acter is as strong as the fault it cherishes. The greatest 
reason, therefore, why we should stop and consider the 
*' but," at which our neighbors shake their heads, is that 
all the while it is tugging at our heart strings to drag 
us down to its own level. 

Naaman was a great man, and honorable, but he was 
a leper. He had everything, and, alas ! he had nothing. 
His only hope was to wash in some Jordan and be clean. 
It is so in the moral life. One bad quality may in the 
end make nugatory a score of good ones. If you and I 
are permitting some perilous " but " to limit the good 
in us, if we are putting prejudice in the place of moral 
judgment, unforgiving passions in the place of Christian 
charity, suspicious jealousy in the place of kindly trust, 
dishonest desires in the place of absolute integrity, a 
base appetite in the place of virtuous self-control, any- 
thing wrong in the place of something right, depend 
upon it we are in a bad way. We cannot attend to that 
"but" too soon. For in actual life it is not any unreal 
state of general depravity, but a very real, and in a 
comparative sense possibly a very small, personal fault, 
which drags men and women down to a poor and un- 
worthy state. Something which we in our blindness 
view only as a trifling limitation, not as a moral peril, — 
only a " but " in an otherwise commendable life. 



BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 

June 8, 1883. 
Beauty for ashes. — Isaiah Ixi. 3. 

MANY years since my eye happened to fall upon a 
monarch of the woods, — a lordly pine, — lying 
prone on the ground, A little while ago I passed the 
place again. Where the great wreck had been were a 
few little heaps of dust. To these had the massive trunk 
and the giant branches resolved themselves. Such sights 
are common enough, yet in thoughtful moods such sights 
are impressive. To dust and ashes all material things 
are hastening. The forests grow and fall, and moulder. 
The everlasting hills, as we call them, are slowly wasting. 
The noblest things of man's device disintegrate. If we 
wait long enough they will bury themselves in their own 
ruin. 

It did not require therefore any great fancy in the old 
Hebrew to find in ashes the appropriate symbol of life's 
heavy pains, of life's bitter disappointments, of life's 
solemn separations, and especially of life's inevitable 
end. All around him were sights and experiences which 
suggested such symbolism. And each generation and 
each race, as it comes upon the stage, finds something 
in human discipline which makes the type not inapt. 
Life passes on, and we pass on. We leave behind us in 
our march the ashes of how many good ho])cs, noble 
plans, pleasant friendships, and sacred relations. 



BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 455 

Take the day dreams of the bright boy, or the beautiful 
tender visions of the thoughtful girl. What a thing life 
is going to be to them ! How grand, how attractive, 
how successful, how encircled with pleasant objects and 
interests ! In a certain sense these dreams are fulfilled. 
In a certain other sense they are never fulfilled. If the 
hopes be pure and the purposes full of moral vigor, then 
they are fulfilled in a character growing all the time 
manly, womanly, truthful, brave, and loving. But as 
for any material fulfilment, how few of us reach mid- 
life, and do not look back upon the ashes of many a 
fond expectation ! 

Then certainly there are harsher experiences, which 
the Hebrew symbol aptly typifies. We form friendships. 
Nothing seems so good. We think they will last as 
long as life lasts. They do not last. They come to an 
untimely end, from separation, or misapprehension, or 
alienation. Or they burn low in the socket for want of 
the fuel of common studies, common interests, and com- 
mon aspirations. So true is this, that that sturdy 
moralist, old Samuel Johnson, says that he who does 
not make new friends will soon have no friends. 

The strong man, full of courage, full of will, having 
many to depend on him, has his great plans and reason- 
able enterprises. And somehow plan and enterprise 
crumble before his eyes ; — and he has to content him- 
self with humble ways and petty results. 

Assuredly there are failures harder to bear, and harder 
to explain, than any of these we have mentioned. How 
bitter to watch the sure failure of physical vigor, — to ex- 
change health for disease, — power for powerlessness, — 
a frame whose every motion was an exhilaration for one 
peopled with pains that will not depart, — this beau- 
tiful world in which to wander at will for the four 



456 BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 

walls of a chamber from which there can be no wan- 
dering ! 

What grief to know that some winsome face we shall 
no more see, — that some pleasant voice, sweeter to our 
ears than softest strain of flute, we shall no more hear, 
— that there is a vacant place in the household forever, 
like some great strong tower fallen out of the city's wall ! 
These things are. I do not exaggerate their importance. 
Nobody less. I look with contempt upon the question 
whether life is worth the living. Life is very good as the 
Eternal Goodness stamped it. It has more pleasures 
than pains, more opportunities than failures. And even 
the pains and the failures, honestly accepted, come to 
have a goodness and use we dreamed not of. I do not 
exaggerate. But I recognize that those grand old 
Hebrew poets had a firm grip upon reality ; that when 
they said we have eaten ashes like bread, they described 
in a figure something actual and universal. Yes ; with 
all of us some hope, some plan, some friendship, some- 
thing very real to us and precious, burns down to white 
ashes. That is to say, the experiences which disappoint 
us, which bafifle us, which grieve us, are in life, and can- 
not be put out of it, any more than breathing, or sleep- 
ing, or the pulsation of the blood can be put out of 
it. And we have to face them. The only question 
is, How? 

It is interesting to see how the poet-prophet, as it 
were by one leap of the imagination, rises to the high- 
est truth, " Beauty for ashes." Not desolation, not 
barrenness, but beauty. As the tender verdure and 
wondrous growth of the outward world spring out of 
the dust of old fertility, so fresh spiritual excellence 
may rise out of our mouldering plans and buried joys. 



BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 457 

There are many ways in which the heart receives its 
deep disappointments. Perhaps the natural way is by 
rebellion. The instinct of the heart is to resist even the 
inevitable. It feels that it must wrench open the doors 
of fate to bring back the vanished satisfaction. It will 
not accept the fatal law which robs it of what it values 
beyond price. It would repeal and nullify the very 
course of nature, if that is to bring the blankness of 
death where fulness of affection has been. 

Hardly does this overstate. Often, I am sure, men 
and women, confronting a great calamity, say, in their 
hearts if not in words, they cannot have it so ; they 
will not bear it. Possibly this rebellion against the 
unavoidable ill is essential in a nature that has a will, 
which is real and personal, even if finite and limited. 
Possibly, too, the possession of such a stubborn will, 
which for the time being introduces into the bosom a 
sort of spiritual warfare, is what enables trouble to make 
fixed and noble impressions upon us. Much like this 
sings the poet : — 

"He fought his doubts and gathered strength; 
He wOuld not have his judgment blind, 
He faced the spectres of the mind, 
And laid them : thus he came at length 

" To find a stronger faith his own." 

In most hearts foolish strife soon gives place to sub- 
mission. It may be brave and tearless, or mute and 
despairing. At any rate, it is not vain and fruitless 
resistance. It recognizes that to beat the head or the 
heart against the adamantine walls of the inevitable is 
childish as well as useless. So there is submission. 
One sometimes thinks that most people get very little 
farther than this. They discern not the higher good 



458 BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 

which should come through the lower grief. To their 
blind eyes the silver lining of the cloud is hidden ; and 
it does not break with blessings on their heads. They 
have simply by sheer mental vigor lifted themselves out 
of impotent struggling to that stoicism in which they 
can suffer and be strong. They dream of no larger 
blessing to come ; and they get none. 

It is a great step upward when we pass from fruitless 
complaints to resignation. For what is resignation ? 
The laying down our wills and taking up a better will ; 
the admission then to our hearts that, whether we can 
see it or not, and whether we can understand it or not, 
there may be an explanation to the cloud-side and the 
storm-side of life. Slowly disappointment comes to be 
seen as something more than a broken hope, and grief 
as something higher than mere endurance of suffering. 
Dimly we see 

" That God which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element. 
And one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

Our burden may not drop off, as did Christian's at 
the foot of the cross. But if we have to keep it on our 
shoulders we have at least learned that burden-bearing 
is included in the good counsel of the good God ; that 
the burden itself is not like a leaden weight, but rather 
like the rough nugget of the miner, which is seamed 
through all its rocky bulk with veins of purest gold. 

Rebellion ! Submission ! Resignation ! These are all 
natural, and perhaps necessary spiritual moods or con- 
ditions. But neither is the ultimate. See how Isaiah 
states it : " To give unto them that mourn beauty for 



BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 459 

ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise 
for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees 
of righteousness, the planting of the Lord." Trans- 
formation, — the change of material ill into spiritual 
good, the purchase by physical losses of inward virtues, 
the finding in character our sure recompense for mor- 
tal shipwrecks, — can we stop short of these results ? 
Or, stopping, are we ripe scholars in the school of 
adversity ? 

What is the beauty which comes out of ashes ? The 
beauty, at any rate, of seeing things as they are. If 
life goes on without any friction and without any disap- 
pearance of outward good, we come to feel that all the 
worth of living is centred in what we possess and enjoy. 
Many a one, nominally believing in spiritual verities, 
who would feel insulted to be denied the Christian 
name, is essentially pagan in frame of mind. The 
kingdom of heaven longed for, to be purchased by all 
we have, is not within. It is not faith, truth, and love. 
It is without. It is meat and drink. It is found in 
strength of body, in fulness of granary, in abundance 
of enjoyment, and in these alone. The rude shock 
which takes the health out of the bones, or makes the 
wisdom of the wise to be foolishness, or does anything 
to break up the smooth flow of the outward experience, 
certainly lets in light to the soul. The need of some 
qualities over which time and change have no power 
must now be recognized. If there has been any pro- 
found study of life's deeper meanings, faith, truth, pu- 
rity, tenderness, take their true place as the legitimate 
nobility in the soul's kingdom. 

The beauty, again, of coming into more considerate 
and kindly relations with our fellow men. " I know," 
said a clear-headed man of another, " tliat sorrow has 



460 BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 

ploughed his heart. For he was selfish, and is generous; 
he was indifferent to his fellows, and is interested in 
them ; he was harsh, and is tender," The remark was 
profound. You see the truth of it tested constantly on 
a large scale. The neighborhood which is altogether 
prosperous, having no burdens, no sickness, and no loss, 
is likely to grow hard, critical, selfish, supercilious. But 
our neighbors' troubles open our hearts, quicken our 
sympathies, make us, in short, come into genuine hu- 
man relations with them. A certain beauty of tender- 
ness and mutual helpfulness, unknown before, enters 
unbidden into this little circle of tried hearts, until one 
asks, " What would become of this world if the sun 
always shone, and to what spiritual shore should we 
sail or drift if we had only favorable breezes ? " The 
questions are pertinent. Of course adversity as well as 
prosperity can be peiwerted. But there is a subtle al- 
chemy in losses rightly used. And in well ordered lives 
the beauty of gentle thoughts and considerate ways, 
which springs out of the ashes of our cherished plans 
and hopes, is something wondrous fair and good. And 
until we find such beauty from ashes we have not fath- 
omed the Divine purpose in life. 

In a word, transformation of character is the pro- 
foundest result of the dark side of life, and its only 
adequate explanation. Can you tell just why good men 
and true often fail in all their plans and enterprises, 
and, as the Psalmist expressed it, eat ashes ? You may 
reply, that a little more carefulness or a little more 
judgment on their part would have changed all this. 
Not always, not always. 

Can you say what good purpose is in that experience 
by which a strong and useful man becomes a cripple or 
a confirmed invalid, and his life embodied pain ? Again 



BEAUTY rOE ASHES. 461 

you answer, " A little more prudence would have averted 
this," And again we reply, "Not always, not always." 
The actual truth is, that in the presence of failure, of 
disease, of broken friendships, of desolated homes, reason 
is baffled. No doubt there is a sufficient explanation 
in the nature of things ; but we are not large enough 
to grasp it. In theory grief looks to us all wrong; and 
any kind of real loss just so much needless deduction 
from the sum of our happiness. But to go on with no 
explanation is wellnigh intolerable ; and it is hardly 
satisfying merely to admit that the whole experience is 
in a stronger and presumably wiser hand than ours. 
The sufficient explanation never comes, until we coin 
our self-denials and sacrifices, our great pains and bitter 
partings, into better Christian characters, — that is, until 
we win beauty from ashes. 

We say Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief. He was. I often ponder these words and 
the facts behind the words. I say to myself, " Could 
Jesus have been the master of souls he was and iSj with- 
out such an experience ? Could he have known as he 
did what was in man ? Could he have felt all his ten- 
der charity towards human weakness ? Could he have 
given himself up to the truth with such absolute self- 
surrender, unless he had fathomed by practical expe- 
rience the meaning of those mystic words, ' beauty for 
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garments of 
praise for the spirit of heaviness ' ? " Reverently I 
answer, " He could not." The Scriptures mean some- 
thing when they declare that he was made perfect 
through suffering. And Paul could not have been Paul, 
or Luther Luther, or Channing Channing, or any great 
and good man what he is, if there were no burdens to 



462 BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 

bear, — if all the obstacles were swept away, as we sweep 
the leaves of autumn from our well kept paths. 

" Beauty for ashes." That is truth in the natural 
kingdom. All the verdure with which the world clothes 
itself — the upspringing grass, the opening wealth of 
foliage, the gorgeousness of blossom, the bounty of 
fruitage — comes in some sort from the dust and ashes 
of each last year's growth. That is truth in the spirit- 
ual kingdom. Every leaf which drops from the tree of 
our prosperity, every bough that moulders, feeds, or 
should feed, the rising fortunes of the soul, and make 
the soul a tree of righteousness planted by the Lord. 



TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 

September 17, 1893. 

And the tongs thereof . . . shall he of pure gold. 
Exodus xxv. 38. 

THESE words occur in the description of the sacred 
objects contained in the most Holj Place. What 
thought, if any, do they suggest ? This : that there are 
stages in man's development when he has to worship God 
through rich material forms. He can do no otherwise. 
A few, indeed, in every age can find expression for their 
devout feelings in fitly chosen words. Some even rise 
higher, and learn that the best way to serve the Eternal 
Goodness is by a life which to the core is true, pure, and 
kindly. As for the rest, they require something striking, 
gorgeous, appealing to eye and ear, and stimulating to 
the imagination. This clearly was the state of the Jew 
in the earlier periods of his history. His worship was 
a spectacle. Every object on which the eye rested 
gleamed with gold, — the altar, the mercy seat, the 
table of testimony. The priests were clad in purple 
and fine linen, and glistened with jewels. Thus all the 
appointments, though to our taste somewhat barbaric, 
were as superb and impressive as the means and art of 
the tribes could make them. We cannot doubt that 
they were adapted to the time and people, and that they 
did do something — much — to lift these out of the 
coarseness and narrowness of their ordinary thought to 



464 TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 

some dim perception of their relation to Him whose eyes 
are too pure to behold iniquity. The natural, and, as 
the history of all ancient races shows, the necessary re- 
sult of what we may call external and sensuous worship 
is richness, cost. These poor folks might not be able 
to clothe devotions in appropriate language. Their lives 
might not be a very good and acceptable offering. At 
any rate, they would not bring to their God that which 
cost them nothing. 

We may go a step farther. Not only did the costli- 
ness of the gift in some sort measure the zeal of the 
givers ; but that zeal was most clearly manifested in the 
things that were humblest, least perceptible, and least 
dignified in uses. The altar, which stood in the sight 
of all the people, must be enriched with gold. That 
of course. The mercy seat, — mystic type of the ever 
present and ever gracious Lord, — nothing that wealth 
or art could give could be too much for that. But that 
the insignificant things, the things which had no majestic 
part to play, should be of pure gold, — this more than 
the greater things shows how worshipful after their 
light these people were. As I read the account I am im- 
pressed as a friend was when he visited a celebrated 
cathedral. The massive tower, the tall spire, the grace- 
ful pinnacles, the clustered pillars, the lofty arches, the 
many-hued windows, — all, he said, filled him with ad- 
miration. But when, peering in dark nooks and corners, 
he found lovely carvings, which perhaps not one visitor 
in ten thousand ever saw, he understood what love, 
what zeal, what religious fidelity, had been put into the 
work. 

We have passed largely out of the era of sensuous 
worship. Not indeed that external rites and forms have 



TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 465 

passed away. For so long as man is a complex being, 
made up of body and soul, of the seen and the unseen, — 
and so long as what we see and hear travels by untrace- 
able roads to the invisible within us, — we cannot alto- 
gether dispense with external religion. But more and 
more we are recognizing that the purpose of all religion 
worthy the name is to shape the man, to make his real 
self true, pure, and full of love ; that is, to fulfil in the 
most genuine way the purpose of God in bringing him 
into being. 

Admit this. All the same we must have the tongs 
of pure gold. Or, to state it in the language of prose, 
we must see to it that the small acts of our life quite 
as much as the large ones conform to highest spiritual 
standards. For one obvious reason. The great mass 
of men have little else to which they can apply moral 
and spiritual principles, — little else by which they can 
manifest a disposition to serve God and to be faithful 
to the truth. Constantly recurring acts of toil with no 
greatness either of dimension or quality, — little obliga- 
tions, so limited in scope that they neither stir the blood 
nor inspire the soul, — all this levelness, all this monot- 
ony, all this cutting up of life into petty fragments, with 
little or no admixture of heroic or even striking elements, 
is what makes up the account of myriads of lives. Cer- 
tainly this is altogether true of the lot of what we call 
the unfavored classes. Probably to a far greater degree 
than we appreciate, it is true also of the lot of what we 
so grandly term the favored classes. Take the day 
laborers, on the land, in shops and factories. How is 
their life made up ? Of constant acts of toil, stroke upon 
stroke, week in, week out, illumined now and then by 
gleams of pleasure, and made sweet and pure by homely 

30 



466 TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 

household affection. Consider the way life comes to a 
mother with a large family and moderate means. There 
is household work, to keep the home neat and well 
ordered ; sewing that the children may be clothed, cook- 
ing that they may be fed. And all this goes on, not 
simply from sun to sun, but from year to year. Nor 
am I of the opinion that this feature of experience is 
confined to a few classes. Largely it affects all. The 
merchant has vast and complex transactions. Yet the 
petty details of buying and selling, of book-keeping, of 
collections and payments, how many and how engrossing 
they are ! The physician has his great hours when he 
wrestles with disease and is the victor. But perhaps he 
too has times when his whole life seems a ceaseless rep- 
etition. The lawyer takes honest pride in the thorough 
research, the legal acumen, the force of argument, which 
he brings to bear upon his great cases. Yet I venture to 
think that sometimes he tires of the whole thing, — tires 
of precedents, tires of controversy. Even if you could be 
that which so many crave to be, the head of the nation, 
all would not be grand and majestic. All would not be 
of national and international import. Possibly you 
would be quite as much struck by the littleness of your 
duties as their largeness. There would be hours lost 
in fruitless interviews, days wasted in trivial questions 
about small offices, great portions of valuable time given 
to the reading and approving of petty private bills. 

Do we imply then that the usual experience of the 
average man or woman cannot be lifted to the plane of 
genuine spiritual worth? This is the last thing any 
thoughtful person would say. But to do it we must 
make the tongs of pure gold. "We must put great virtue 
into small deeds. We must make the monotony of life 
lustrous by a disposition which has the richness in it 



TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 467 

of a just and holy soul. It is fidelity, it is sincerity, 
it is pureness, it is love, — not large field, not narrow- 
field, — which gives any life worth and dignity. Sweet 
George Herbert packs the whole lesson into six familiar 
lines : — 

" A servant with this clause 
Makes drudgery divine ; 
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 
Makes that and the action fine. 

*' This is the famous stone 
That turneth all to gold." 

The good we do in the world, the brightness and hap- 
piness which we awaken in human hearts, the elevation 
of thought and feeling which we promote in others, de- 
pend much more upon having the tongs of pure gold 
than the great altar or the beautiful gate of the temple. 
That is, the noble fashion with which we perform 
ordinary duties, the fine flavor which goes into words 
and acts, otherwise of little importance, — the purity 
and sweetness of our life on its common level, — these 
are the things which enable us to exercise an influence, 
not always noticed, but inevitably powerful for good, and 
enduring. We are not apt to think so. Our idea is, 
that if we could do something grand, something which 
would benefit a whole community, possibly save a state, — 
if w^e could be a Washington, or a Lincoln, or a Florence 
Nightingale, or a great benefactor like unto them, — that 
would pay. But not one in a thousand of us has in him 
the stuff out of which to make a public benefactor. And 
if we had, not one in a thousand ever has the oppor- 
tunity. And when such opportunities do come, too 
often they come in times of pain and grief and stress 
of public danger, and the chance seems dearly pur- 



468 TOXGS OF PURE GOLD. 

chased. But we all can live ordinary lives. In fact, we 
have to do so. And the worth of those lives to others, 
their helpfulness to the world, is settled by the amount 
of the fine gold of pureness, of truth, of kindliness, we 
put into conduct. What is the one common relation of 
life ? The family relation. "We are all members of a 
home. Now a good home is not a brilliant phenom- 
enon. It does not attract attention as a flaming comet 
would. But a good happy home is not only a well-spring 
of pleasure, but a well-spring of nobility. It sends out 
men and women that are of use. But what makes a 
home good? Speech, conduct, which are not simply 
gilded, but gold all through. Lives whose quiet current 
is full of gentleness, of friendliness, of gladness to do 
and bear. We look. At first we say, " This is noth- 
ing remarkable." We look again. Then we cry, " What 
so wonderful ! " Here the commonest routine takes on 
sweetness and dignity, and compels happiness to come 
and dwell among men. 

Call to mind a quite different aspect of life. A man 
is a great manufacturer, or a great merchant, or he suc- 
cessfully cultivates his broad acres. Certainly it is a 
benefit, indeed it is essential, that the mill should pour 
forth its great tide of fabrics of cotton and wool, of iron 
and brass ; that this wonderful process of distribution 
should go on in our warehouses ; that the earth under 
skilful husbandry should yield its increase. But the 
more we contemplate these material benefits, the more 
impersonal they look. The man loses his individuality. 
He seems but a cog in the wheel, — at most a single 
wheel in a great mass of machinery, in which his little 
movement is merged and almost lost. Let now his per- 
sonality be full of integrity. Let his walk among men 
be just, kind, and considerate. That is, let his conduct 



TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 469 

inevitably gravitate toward what is right, high-minded. 
Then he will exercise personal force, and for good. It 
will not be the power which comes from the magnitude 
of his transactions, or from his skill in some one branch 
of material activity. It will be personal power, the in- 
herent power for good which he has, because on the 
ordinary level of life he has moral dignity and sweet- 
ness. This is the point to be insisted upon, — the ex- 
traordinary worth not only to ourselves, but to others, 
of our usual speech and deeds, so be that their quality 
is fine enough. 

What is the effect upon the man himself of what we 
may call the minor details of living ? The very great- 
est. Our daily talk, our common acts, things that we 
do not rate high, perhaps count to be trivial, quite as 
much as anything else shape character. As a rule, 
people do not leap into excellence of any sort. Gener- 
ally they reach it by slow gradations. I admit that 
there are apparent, possibly real exceptions to this state- 
ment ; that there are people who seem to change from 
bad to good as it were in the twinkling of an eye. Such 
examples may be real. Certainly they are rare. Some- 
body has said that integrity, like confidence, is a plant of 
slow growth. Well, how does it grow ? By cultivation. 
Telling the truth, dealing justly, are not, if we are to 
judge by the ways of large bodies of people, absolutely 
natural qualities. You cultivate them in your child ; 
and you cultivate them through words so trivial, acts so 
trifling, and scenes so ordinary, that often they leave no 
trace on the memory. But rectitude becomes a compo- 
nent part of character. You can no more take it out 
of the character than you can take the blue out of a fair 
sky. It is the same with all other virtues. Pureness, 



470 TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 

gentleness, the unselfish mind, the liberal heart, are the 
golden glories wrought out through a good use of homely 
experience. Neither the sturdy nor the gracious qualities 
grow up as the Eastern magician is said to produce trees, 
sowing his seed, covering it with a tent, and then in a 
moment of time displaying the plant full grown. They 
grow rather as docs the oak. At first it is a tiny stalk. 
Then all unseen the wholesome influences of air and 
earth and moisture feed it. Slowly its trunk adds ring 
to ring, and throws out its great boughs, and spreads 
its innumerable branches. 

If you look a moment, you will see that this method 
of character building is according to the nature of things. 
When the old Hebrew was constructing his great altar, 
and the mercy seat, and the golden candlestick, of course 
he builded well. They were the obvious things. Friend 
and stranger knew all about them. Simple national 
pride might have directed his course. It might have 
had little reverence in it and cultivated little. But 
when he made the inconspicuous things used in worship 
of pure gold, they were mute witness to his loving fidel- 
ity, and the very thoroughness of his acts must have 
cultivated the rude spirit of devoutness which was in 
him. Read your Bible. You will find that it was 
through just such processes that Jesus became the great 
teacher. He went down to Nazareth, says Luke, and 
was subject to his father and mother. From twelve to 
thirty years we literally know nothing of him but tliat 
he wrought at his father's bench, and performed the 
obscure duties of an obscure station. Yet it is signifi- 
cantly added that lie " increased in wisdom and stature, 
and in favor with God and man." It is just so in our 
human life. Under some mighty impetus men's minds 
and men's souls sometimes do almost miraculous things, 



TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 471 

just as the body under great excitement lifts unheard 
of weights, though when the excitement dies away it is 
no stronger. But one treads the paths of an ordinary 
life, keeps calm amid its worries and perplexities, does 
not permit petty wrongs and injuries to ruffle his tem- 
per, nor its many temptations to harden his heart or 
undermine his integrity. Such a way of receiving life 
is not accidental. It implies steady government. There 
is a plain application of thought and conscience, yes, of 
real Christianity, to the details of living. There can be 
but one result. The monotony of life, its trivialities 
even, elevate character. For nobody can put the fine 
gold of pure purpose into daily conduct, and not be the 
better for it. 

We can, indeed, press this point too far. To assert 
that the great hours of life have no influence on char- 
acter would not only be untrue, but absurd. The effect 
upon mind and heart of sudden prosperity and of unknown 
griefs is patent. Great occasions sometimes lift men 
out of themselves. The timid become heroes, the self- 
ish generous, the sluggish take on unexpected activity. 
Nor is this change necessarily temporary. Occasionally 
a new man seems to be the outcome. But one thing 
may be said of these great experiences of life, whether 
they be fruitful of good or the reverse. They are not 
likely to pass by unperceived. They do not slip away 
without our notice, as do the waters of the brook beside 
which we sit and dream. 

Now the opposite is apt to be true of the small hours 
and experiences. We take little account of them. They 
glide on in ceaseless succession, simply undirected. Yet 
as they come and go they make mark upon mark, and 
construct or reconstruct character, — and few consider. 



472 TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 

It is as when a tempest loosens and sends down an 
avalanche of earth and stone into the valley. It fastens 
the attention of all eyes ; but for centuries dew and mist 
and gentle rain have accomplished mightier results, lay- 
ing bare the granite peaks, and making deep and fertile 
the intervale, and only the wise take it to heart. This 
is the danger of our routine life, — that it is uncared 
for, — that it is a ship sailing on without rudder or pilot. 
The sweet-tempered become peevish ; the generous cov- 
etous; the gentle-mannered and pure-minded boy is 
transformed into the coarse man, whose speech offends 
your taste and insults your moral sense ; — and nobody 
can tell just how or when or why it all happened. The 
process was long. It was not a plunge over a precipice. 
It was a descent down innumerable steps. These did 
not drop into a sea of pitch and become at once defiled. 
They just touched pitch again and again, — a thousand 
times, and the work was quite as thoroughly done. Tliat 
is, they were the results of not making even trivial speech 
and trifling conduct golden. As with the vices, so with 
the virtues. They grow gradually. They travel slowly 
along the trodden paths. 

For every reason, therefore, because in every life the 
small things are in the majority, — because most of the 
good we do in the world must be done through little 
opportunities, — because it is largely the daily routine 
which sha])es character, — and, finally, because what we 
overlook, and suffer to work their way in us for ill or 
good, are the ordinary experiences, — we must see to it 
that even the tongs are of pure gold. To that ceaseless 
monotony which every life largely is, we must apply 
considerateness, high purpose, steady repression of evil, 
and as steady encouragement of good. You cannot make 
the monotony of your lawn green and beautiful except 



TONGS OF PURE GOLD. 473 

by applying to it perpetual vigilance. It pays as well, 
it pays better, to do all this for your character. 

Of old, we used to select as the great optical power 
the telescope, searching the vast spaces of the starry 
world. To-day perhaps we should choose the micro- 
scope, unveiling the wondrous uses of infinitesimal being. 
AVhat is Christian culture but the application of those 
vastest spiritual powers, faith and faithfulness, to the 
modest details of living ? Details which will be sure to 
escape our notice unless we keep our eye single, and our 
experience in every nook and cranny, as well as its open 
courts, full of light. 



SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 

Preached on the Seventy-fifth Anniversary and Reconsecra- 

TION OF THE FlRST INDEPENDENT ChRIST's ChURCH, BALTIMORE, 

Maryland, October 29, 1893. 

We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and build the 
house that was builded these many years ago. — Ezra v. 11. 

TO-DAY this language is literally fulfilled. These 
servants of the God of heaven and earth with joy 
and reverence rededicate to religion and the uses of a 
Liberal Christian faith the house which was builded 
these many years ago. Seventy-five years have passed 
since Rev. Dr. James Freeman of King's Chapel 
preached in this church its dedication sermon. For 
more than a third of a century he had been in fact, 
though not in name, a pronounced Unitarian ; and his 
society, in consonance with his convictions and their 
own, had materially changed their ritual that the man 
they revered, loved, and admired might conscientiously 
remain their minister. One year later Rev. Dr. Wil- 
liam Ellery Channing delivered in this place what has 
always been known by the name of " the Baltimore Ser- 
mon." It was spoken on the occasion of the ordination 
of Rev. Jared Sparks, afterwards so honorably known in 
the realm of historical research. It more than any 
other one cause produced what has so far proved to be 
the permanent separation into two parts of the great 
Congregationalist body. That Dr. Channing did not 
desire this division is certain. What he believed to be 



SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 475 

most wise and most likely to promote the sway of pure 
Christianity was that large tolerance which could per- 
mit all to remain in the common fold, and with absolute 
freedom speak the truth as they found it written in the 
Bible, in the universe, and on the tablets of the human 
heart. 

But whatever its author wished, or thought to be wise, 
the Baltimore sermon was the last in a long chain of 
causes which created the Unitarian denomination. The 
student can indeed trace its roots back almost to the 
first years of colonial history. The antiquarian can 
point out in the last century ministers who worshipped 
God after the manner men call heresy, and celebrated 
men not a few, like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, 
who followed in their footsteps. But the period of crys- 
tallization had not then come. As surely, therefore, 
as the followers of Jesus were first called Christians at 
Antioch, so they that held to the strict unity of God, 
the real nobility of human nature, and the inward and 
spiritual character of true, salvation, were called Uni- 
tarians at Baltimore. If, therefore, we have any struc- 
ture which may properly be called a memorial building, 
it is the very one in which we are now gathered. 

Why did the Unitarian denomination come into 
being ? What did it seek to do ? Or of what use has 
it been in the past ? One thing is clear. The fathers 
of our faith did not wish to destroy the spiritual house 
in which their souls had been reared, but to rebuild it 
and more according to the pattern by which Jesus had 
built it these many years ago. They would remove 
the unsightly excrescences with which time had de- 
faced it. They would make wide its gates, that all 
who desired might enter. They .would fill its courts 



476 SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 

with a gracious hospitality to attract all true hearts. 
Restoration, not destruction, was what they desired 
and sought. So at the outset the Unitarian move- 
ment was largely of the nature of a protest ; — a 
protest on the one hand against every form of spiritual 
bondage ; a demand that every human being should be 
permitted, under the guidance of his own reason and 
conscience, to search for the truth without the restraint 
of traditional bonds, and without the fear of ecclesias- 
tical penalties ; — a protest on the other hand against 
certain prevailing doctrines, such as the trinity, total 
depravity, election, — doctrines which were held to be 
harsh, unreasonable, and not sustained by the Scriptures. 

There was a special reason in the condition of the 
times for this protest in behalf of spiritual freedom. 
Early Congregationalism did not make its church cove- 
nants doctrinal. It demanded of its members at any 
rate, and we suspect largely also of its ministers, only a 
true Christian experience and character. Unquestion- 
ably these early fathers were in substance Calvinists. 
God's sovereignty, man's depravity, the arbitrary divine 
choice of the few to be saved and the rest to be damned, 
the endless torment of those to whom the terms of sal- 
vation were not available, — these dogmas they believed 
with a terrible sincerity. But they did not put them 
into their church covenants. Read the simple compact 
adopted in 1629 by the First Church of Salem: "We 
covenant with the Lord and one with another, and do 
bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together 
in all His ways, according as He is pleased to reveal 
Himself unto us in His blessed word of truth." 

Study the covenant of the First Church, Boston, as 
it was framed in 1630 by Rev. John Wilson and his 
celebrated parishioner. Governor John Winthrop. The 



SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 477 

light reveals it engraven on the glass as it shines through 
the great east window of the present place of worship : 
" We, whose names are hereunder written, being by His 
most wise and good Providence brought together into 
this part of America, in the Bay of Massachusetts, and 
desirous to unite ourselves in one Congregation or 
Churcli, under the Lord Jesus Christ, our Head, in such 
sort as becometh all those whom He hath redeemed 
and sanctified to Himself, do hereby solemnly and re- 
ligiously (as in His most Holy Presence) promise and 
bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the 
rule of the Gospel, and in sincere conformity to His 
Holy Ordinances, in mutual love and respect each to the 
other, so near as God shall give us grace." 

We repeat, that no one doubts that the writers of 
these covenants were sincere, and very likely stiff and 
narrow Calvinists. But they wrote better than they 
knew. Their covenants had in them the element of 
elasticity. It was possible for men to accept them and 
grow. Ministers and peoples might and did differ, and 
walk together. No better proof is needed than the fact 
that the very churches on which these early covenants 
are to-day proudly blazoned are Unitarian. But forty 
years before the settlement of Dr. Freeman, say in 
1740, there grew up a disposition to narrow the old 
compacts, to define them, to give them special doctrinal 
meaning, — to change them, in short, from covenants to 
creeds. This change seems to have been owing largely 
to the influence of that great, sincere man, with his aw- 
ful convictions about God and His creatures, Jonathan 
Edwards. This disposition to narrow and define grew 
more and more strong down to the time of Dr. Chan- 
ning; and as it grew, divisions rose in churches and 
between churches. It became wellnigh impossible for 



478 SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 

Arminians and Calvinists, Unitarians and Trinitarians, 
Rationalists and Traditionalists, however sincere and 
earnest, and however truly disciples of Jesus, to walk 
together. 

The first use of the Unitarian movement was as an 
embodied protest against this narrowing tendency. It 
strove to make the Church of Christ broad enough to 
include all his people. It was a voice crying out against 
everything that puts the human mind under bonds, or 
inflicts upon progress pains and penalties. The effi- 
ciency of this protest can hardly be doubted. The last 
seventy-five years have been years of increasing toler- 
ance and enlarging charity. Men are not likely in our 
day to come into absolute intellectual union. For a long 
time opinions will be many and sects not a few. But 
he is blind to the lessons of the hour who does not see 
that the time is close at hand when all will gladly 
admit that he is a true child of God who seeks to do 
the will of the Eternal and to walk in equity and love 
with his fellow men. 

Early Unitarianism was not only a protest against 
spiritual bondage. Equally it was a protest against dog- 
mas which it held to be irrational, cruel, and unscrip- 
tural. It does not seem necessary to state afresh the 
special points of a controversy which in one form or 
another has been waged ever since Christianity was. 
They can hardly be stated better than they were in this 
place three quarters of a century ago. What does 
seem wise to affirm is the genuine use, the unspeakable 
value, of that seventy -five years' protest. All the world 
has not flocked into our theological camp. That is not 
the way most change. They alter their thoughts and 
feelings far more than their outward position and rela- 
tions. They stand in the same place, but they them- 



SEEMON AT BALTIMORE. 479 

selves are not the same. So it has happened that on 
all the points at issue a modifying and softening process 
has been going on, and is likely to continue to go on. 
The creeds may read the same, but men translate them 
differently. Who thinks of God, whether in his unity 
or trinity, as sitting a sovereign on his throne, and from 
the beginning electing some to glory and some to shame ? 
And who does not rather think of Him as the Eternal 
Father, in whose sight all souls are precious ? Who looks 
upon man, incomplete and sinful as he is, yet heir of all 
the ages, as a total spiritual ruin ? What keeps Jesus in 
our remembrance ? That he purchases for us heaven ? 
Or that he is himself the grandest of personalities, the 
truth bearer, the quickener and inspirer ? To noble 
men and women does salvation mean simply entrance 
of the soul into a place, however beatific, or rather the 
entrance of the divine life into the soul ? And, espe- 
cially, how many who are themselves loyal to the old 
standards feel that a literal acceptance of them is 
essential to a true Christian experience ? In every 
direction there has been a vast change, and always 
toward sweetness and light, always toward rationality 
and freedom. So vast has this change been, that we 
are in constant danger of doing gross injustice when- 
ever we apply the authoritative definitions of a not very 
distant past to present conditions of religious thought. 

One of our own prophets has spoken of the Uni- 
tarian protests as " pale negations." The words are 
scantly just. Certainly when those negations were first 
uttered, they were full of warmth and color. They had 
all the force of the unspoken affirmations which were be- 
hind them. On every field of influence, theology, philan- 
thropy, literature, history, they have wrought mightily. 
Were Unitarianism as a separate school of thought to 



480 SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 

die to-morrow, its work would not die. Man would be 
freer. Opinions would be gentler and more rational. 

Step now from the past into the present. To-day 
what use has the world for Unitarianism ? When 
spiritual liberty has been so largely achieved, and the 
most irrational doctrines have been forced to clothe 
themselves in the garments of reason, what real task is 
set for Liberal Christians to do ? Still the same in pur- 
pose if different in details ; — to rebuild the spiritual 
house after a larger fashion ; to fill it with the power of 
a Christian faith and the comfort of a Christian home ; 
to make it the refuge of many souls who cannot find in 
the old either shelter or sweetness. Plainly Unitarian- 
ism has turned, and more and more is turning, toward 
the work of construction. This is the stint Avhich its 
own needs and the needs of the world appoint, and 
which it cannot shun either with safety or honor. 

This constructive tendency has worked and must 
continue to work in two ways, — within, without. Con- 
sider for a moment this tendency as it refers to the 
intellectual and spiritual upbuilding of the denomination 
itself. No religious denomination can permanently re- 
main simply a protest. It must pass on to an affirmative 
position and belief. And this process of internal construc- 
tion was to be carried through by a company of religionists, 
the first article of whose charter was soul freedom, the 
absolute right of every human being to investigate and 
decide highest questions under the guidance of his own 
reason, conscience, and spiritual vision. Others might 
enlighten ; nobody could enslave. No convocation, no 
synod, no conference, no association, had the right or 
the power to put so much as one bond on the soul, un- 
less it chose to wear it. Under this broad charter of 



SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 481 

spiritual liberty we have lived for seventy-five years. The 
most sacred subjects of human inquiry — God, human 
nature, Jesus, the Bible, the future life, what constitutes 
real salvation — have all been submitted without let or 
hindrance to the individual, that he might for himself 
divide the true from the false, the permanent from the 
transient. We will not say that in our history there has 
been no infringement of the perfect law of liberty. In 
the fairest green lawn there are weeds. Across the 
bluest sky wreaths of vapor float. So among us, in 
the white heat of controversy over questions of mighty 
import, occasionally the rights of the individual soul 
may have been forgotten. What we can say is, with 
the passage of the years, the infringement, the chain, 
has been swept away, while unhampered spiritual free- 
dom has gone forward to assured victory. To-day every 
one of our churches and every member in every church 
is absolutely free. What has been the result ? Con- 
fusion ? Anarchy ? The separation of our people into 
individual entities, with no cohesion, no unity of feeling, 
and no sympathy of opinion, — so that no comparison 
will apply to us but the drifting sands of the desert ? 
Is this our experience and our tendency ? Not at all. 
More and more we are coming together. There is no 
Christian body, however strong its ecclesiastical organ- 
ization and however precise its theological statements, 
which is in more substantial union on all the great 
topics of religious thought and faith than that one which 
grants neither to organization nor creed power over the 
individual soul. If to-day there were no other use for 
Unitarianism than to vindicate the safety and the worth 
of absolute spiritual freedom, there would be ample 
cause for its continued existence. 

Turn now from construction as an internal and 

31 



482 SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 

spiritual necessity to construction as an external yet 
sacred duty, and then ask whether, amid the actual 
conditions of modern life, Unitarianism has not a 
present use and worth. What is one of the most sim- 
ple and patent of the social facts of to-day ? This : that 
every third person you meet does not go to church. 
He does not hear sermons ; he does not frequent meet- 
ings ; he is not knit into social religious relations of any 
kind. That is, in respect to the deepest part of him, the 
enduring part of him, he stands alone. In his inner 
experience he is destitute of that subtle but powerful 
influence which in every other department of life 
strengthens and inspires to great achievements. With 
some far more than this, and far worse than this, is 
true. They hardly think moral and spiritual thoughts. 
In their consideration of what they propose to be or do, 
they scarcely take into account what rises above the 
requirements of their work-day or play-day life. 

Out of what does this exceptional condition of 
things grow ? For it is exceptional. In all other 
genuine interests the natural instinct of mankind is to 
come together, not to fly apart. A great deal of tliis 
carelessness about the spiritual side of experience, may 
we not sometimes say, a great deal of this unconscious- 
ness that there is a spiritual side of experience, is the 
result of material engrossment. This is a swift moving 
age. It tasks and monopolizes the powers. It leaves 
little leisure, and often little vitality, justly to weigh 
interests which, if eternal, certainly are unseen. No 
doubt Unitarianism, which has been a voice crying in 
the wilderness, protesting against the things which per- 
plex and the things which seem to be born of unreason, 
has found souls full of doubt concerning the popular 
creeds and confirmed them therein. Still more of this 



SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 483 

unsettling process is due to the critical work of honest 
scholars of other faiths, quite as much as our own, who 
have brought to the common mind new views of the 
history, the authenticity, and the inerrancy of the books 
of the Old and New Testaments. More still of this 
divorce of men from social religion must be laid at the 
door of science, which has not indeed discredited re- 
ligion, and which in the end will place religion on a 
firmer basis. But at the outset it gives religion such 
height, such breadth, such width of application, that the 
old categories of theology cannot contain it. But be the 
cause what it may, and let the accountability rest where 
it will, nobody who has attentively studied the facts of 
life in city and village can count the picture of men's 
divorce from social religion an exaggerated one. Nor 
will thoughtful people look upon this divorce, however 
natural and for the time however needful, with any- 
thing but regret. There are those who in their moral 
and spiritual experience can walk alone and not suffer 
loss. But they are few. 

Construction, or reconstruction, seems therefore to 
be the manifest duty of all religious bodies. Of the old, 
that, so far as honesty will permit, they may modify 
their standards to meet the needs of the broader minds 
that otherwise must cut loose from them. Far more, 
construction is the duty of those who can frankly accept 
the results of the scholar's study and the philosopher's 
research. None too soon have we recognized that the 
use God has for us now is to gather in those who are 
scattered abroad. None too earnestly have we Unitari- 
ans accepted the duty to lay bare the real foundations 
of hope and trust, — to show that knowledge and faith, 
unsparing criticism and devoutest religion, clearest 
science and highest spirituality, can walk together, 



484 SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 

ought to walk together, must walk together, if there 
is to be any lasting security for that life which is 
higher than the things we see and handle. 

In its beginning Unitarianism was largely a protest 
against spiritual bondage and unreason in religion. It 
did not so much seek to build a new edifice as to repair 
and improve the old one. With the passage of the 
years the necessity came to it to build itself up, and to 
help build others up, in a positive and rational faith. 
And, so long as there are those to whose deeper life it 
can best minister, it must continue to be a constructor. 
But the whole duty of a religious body has not been per- 
formed when it has sought to correct theological ei-ror, 
or indeed when it has trained itself and trained others 
up to sound intellectual views of God and his truth. 
Beyond and above these there is a higher duty. That 
duty is to extract from the truths which it affirms th^t 
warm, earnest, winning, and inspiring religion which is 
their proper fruit. We may prophesy that in the future 
far more than in the past this is the very use to which 
God will put the Unitarian denomination. The days of 
controversy over the old seem to be largely over. Partly 
because the convictions of men have greatly changed. 
Partly because most people are putting less stress on 
creeds and more on Christian experience and character. 
Even the latest conclusions of critic and scientist are 
slowly but surely winning their way to acceptance in 
most Orthodox quarters. But what is not settled, and 
wliat needs to be settled, is what effect the new 
thought will have on the inner life of man ; and how it 
shall touch and invigorate those unseen, mysterious 
emotions and hopes out of which the higher life of man 
grows. Has Unitarianism to-day any nobler mission, 



SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 485 

can it have, than to transform these new thoughts, 
which are exercising all minds, into a religion which 
shall alike satisfy the intellect, warm the heart, and 
purify the conduct? 

Let us be just to the old form of religion. Practi- 
cally it has always risen above its intellectual lim- 
itations. It has led multitudes to pure and honest 
lives, brought strength to tempted souls, comfort to 
tried and suffering ones, and in every age has had its 
saints and heroes. But with its theories of God's pur- 
pose and man's nature and history, and the relation 
between the two, has it always been easy to keep out of 
this religion the selfish element ? In ruder periods and 
among ruder people religion was sometimes frankly 
offered, and as frankly accepted, because it purchased 
heaven. Even in nobler statements of faith — and cer- 
tainly with each generation they are nobler — do not the 
lower thoughts of deliverance from outward pains and 
penalties mingle with the higher hopes of inward and 
spiritual gains and advantages, as inducements to get 
and keep religion ? Nay, do not the underlying con- 
ceptions of what salvation really is, and which to some 
extent are beneath new statements as well as old ones, 
compel us to think of religion sometimes, not only as 
deliverer from sin, but as the servant of the Lord, who 
closes the gates of woe and opens the portal of eternal 
blessedness ? 

But whatever may be a just estimate of the real 
quality and tendency of the religious sentiment and 
faith, as they have existed and wrought in the past, it 
is clear that the age is cherishing new thoughts upon 
highest subjects, and that they are getting entrance into 
many pulpits, and finding many sympathetic hearers. 
So it is certain that in the future such thoughts are to 



486 SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 

have a large acceptance. Religion will not change in 
its essentials ; but it must stand in new relations and 
derive its sustenance from new, if not larger, concep- 
tions of the Great Source of all, and of His laws. Con- 
sider the mental and spiritual attitude of the modern 
man. There is no subject so high, or so sacred, that 
he does not grapple with it and seek to achieve fresh 
conclusions. The whole theological scenery, if we may 
use the figure, has been transformed. To him God is 
not a dread sovereign, who of His own good pleasure 
ap})oints this one to bliss and that one to woe. You 
do not even express the whole truth when you call Him 
the Heavenly Father who cares for all His children. 
In his thought God is equally the eternal energy, the 
serene wisdom, which has created and forever sustains 
a divine order which carries forward all, and helps all, 
and hinders none. He cannot say man is a spiritual 
wreck, that can be restored only by miraculous inter- 
vention. That is not the way the present looks to him. 
That is not the way he reads the story of the past. 
Man is an incomplete and erring creature ; but he is on 
the road up from greater incompleteness and a deeper 
moral blindness. Earth and heaven, time and eternity, 
are but terms which express the unending opportunity 
of the human soul ; the conditions under which it learns 
to know by pleasure, by pain, the wise and the good, and 
to cleave to them. Jesus was not here to save men 
from the results of their sins. Not for that did he live 
his wondrous life or speak his wondrous words. He 
sought to fill tliem with that abundant spiritual life 
which casts out death ; to save them from sin itself by 
surrounding them, and as it were saturating their souls, 
with a spiritual atmosphere in which sinful desires die. 
To the reverent mind heaven here, heaven there, is 



SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 487 

primarily purity of heart, holiness of life, love embracing 
all our kind ; and hell is corrupt appetite, is false pur- 
pose, is an unloving heart. 

Thus in every direction there has been an enormous 
change in man's views upon sacred subjects. Very few 
whose opinions and feelings are not more or less affected 
by this trend of thought. And to a large extent these 
views have come to stay ; and every year is to widen the 
sphere of their influence. If religion cannot live side 
by side with them, and get nourishment out of them, 
then it will lose its place as guide and inspirer of life and 
conduct. Assuredly it is the duty of some one to make 
it clear to sincere questioners, that faith in God and 
purest service of Him, discipleship of Jesus and genuine 
following of him — that is, real religion — are perfectly 
consistent with a glad acceptance of all the facts of 
criticism and science. Of whom is it more clearly the 
duty than of those who are free to receive truth, who 
rejoice to receive truth, come from what quarter it 
may ? The usefulness of the Unitarian movement in 
the future must be largely measured by its ability to 
transmute opinions into faith, convictioixs into devout 
sentiments, rationality into spiritual religion, and fresh 
light about our relations to God and his universe into 
nobler performance of duty. 

Seventy-five years have rolled away since the early 
Unitarians reluctantly left the old fold and went forth 
to fulfil their mission in a world which was loath to 
receive them. It is fitting that, met in the very building 
in which it may be said that American Unitarianism 
had its birth throes, we should give a fleeting half-liour, 
not simply to its outward annals, but to its inward 
experience and its life work. It is well that we should 



488 SERMON AT BALTIMORE. 

look within and ask for what has it stood, what has it 
attempted to do, and with what spirit and purpose it 
contemplates the intellectual and spiritual world, where 
everything seems to be in flux and nothing permanent 
save that great law of divine order and growth which 
is carrying us all forward to larger knowledge and 
higher life. There is nothing saddening in this retro- 
spect. We have not accomplished all the sanguine 
dreamed. We have not become in outward proportions 
one of the great sects ; but we have made a healthy 
growth, and have gathered in many souls who could 
have found elsewhere neither refuge nor home. Better 
yet, we have sailed out boldly on the broad ocean of 
truth and have not made shipwreck. To-day we stand 
face to face with the progress of the age, read all the 
critics can say, hear all the message proud science has 
to speak, and know that real religion has lost nothing ; 
that God is still God, only more steadfast in His ways 
than men had thought ; that man is man, but with more 
of God's image in him than the creeds have acknowl- 
edged ; that Jesus is still master of souls, because he 
is the same quickening and inspiring influence that he 
was when he walked Jerusalem's streets or stood by 
Galilee's shore. 

We look outside our own borders and take fresh 
courage. Surely the teachers of religion are broader 
and more tolerant than they were of old. Mind and 
soul are entering into that freedom which our fathers 
won for the body politic a century ago. Yes : the spirit- 
ual house is rapidly rebuilding and on a more generous 
plan. Honest men may not see it. Narrow men may 
close their eyes against the sight. All the same, the 
noble walls are steadily rising ; and the gates are made 
broad, and in a better future will be open night and day ; 



SEKMON AT BALTIMORE. 489 

SO that every one who desires to know God's will and 
do it, to love God's children and serve them, to be a 
disciple of Jesus by partaking of his spirit, may enter 
in and find none to molest. We look forward to another 
seventy-five years, which few of us shall see in the flesh. 
What increase of knowledge, what elevation of faith, 
what enlargement of charity, what ennobling of daily 
life, the prophetic eye rejoices in vision to behold ! 



THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 

January 7, 1894. 
Believe me for the very works' sake. — John xiv. 11. 

A YEAR ago I read Mommsen's History of Ancient 
Rome. His allusions to the period of its early- 
kings greatly impressed me. Of that period we have 
absolutely no authentic history. So far as the story- 
is handed down in writing, it is hopelessly legendary 
and mythical. Are we then destitute of all trustworthy 
information ? By no means. We learn, he says, what 
we know, not from historical tradition, but by means 
of inference from the institutions known to have existed 
soon after. The structure of society, the laws of the 
state, the religious customs, the family relation, art, 
architecture, — all these, which we find fully formed 
and in action when first trustworthy annals came to be, 
do testify of a civilization and development governing 
and unfolding ere trustworthy annals were. We believe 
and know much of those far distant times, not on ac- 
count of the record, but for the sake of the works, which 
abide. It is like the transformations of our planet. No 
account of these has been handed down. None could 
be. But in every tilted layer of rock, in every petrifac- 
tion of tree or animal, the geologist reads the sure story. 
What is true of Roman history might be true of any 
other history. It is supposable that in some remote 
future all annals of our own country prior to the adop- 



THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 491 

tion of the Constitution in 1789 might be lost. Yet I 
can conceive of an acute scholar, like our historian, 
pointing out to the curious reader three thousand years 
hence what varied influences the Puritan, the Cavalier, 
the Huguenot, poured into our common life, and how- 
careful study, with little or no printed evidence, might 
put tlie long struggle with the savage, the successful 
uprising of the Revolution, and the great argument by 
which a loose confederacy became a nation, among well 
ascertained facts. All this would be possible, because 
every unknown past leaves behind works which live and 
act in a known present, and reveal the quality of that 
past. 

Why should we not apply this historic principle to 
Jesus's life ? That is, why should we not use his own 
language with a wide and permanent application ? Sure 
I am, that, if we could get at the core and heart of the 
faith and reverence of Christendom to-day, we should 
find that these qualities do not rest simply upon the fact 
that four short biographies of Jesus were written centu- 
ries ago. Such reverence and faith rest rather on the 
ineffaceable consciousness of mankind, that Jesus has 
written his life and power in fair and noble characters 
upon more than eighteen hundred years of human 
experience ; and that he is doing the same thing to-day, 
and here, and everywhere. Stating it in Gospel phrase, 
men believe in him and submit their lives to his influence 
for his works' sake. Manuscripts may be altered, or 
the history and formation of them may be concealed by 
the mists of a deep antiquity. But moral and spiritual 
force and truth, put into the life of the race, abide, and 
testify of their source and giver. 

This historic principle — for it has certainly become 



492 THE POWER OF JESUS' LTEE. 

that — has peculiar worth and helpfulness in our own 
time. We live in a period of questioning. Doubt has 
in many minds risen to the elevation of an august 
virtue. There are those who would put after every 
statement of Christian history an interrogation point. 
Certainly I cannot in any fulness agree with this ex- 
treme unbelief. Sometimes it seems as irrational as 
the wildest credulity, and to demand of Christian annals 
what it would demand of nothing else. When the last 
historical inquiry shall have been made, and the last 
word of criticism spoken, I suspect that we shall be 
compelled to believe as much as this : that the Gospels 
were written by persons who had an intimate connec- 
tion with the planting of Christianity ; that what they 
wrote they wrote from honest conviction; and finally, 
and most important, that what they wrote unconsciously 
reveals a character larger, loftier, and more spiritual 
than their own. 

Suppose now that we entertain all the questions, con- 
sider all the doubts, put the interrogation point wherever 
an objector desires, and as often as he desires it. Have 
we lost Jesus ? Has that influence, so strong and ten- 
der, so attractive and inspiring, taken its final de- 
parture ? Certainly not. Real works last. Genuine 
spiritual principles and influences are enduring bless- 
ings. Some of the interesting details of that great 
career, as the historian says of Roman annals, may pass 
away. But the main stress and power of the life cannot 
pass away. It has become one of the forces in the 
moral universe. It is this reality of tlie Christ that has 
given him a permanent place in human interest. Great 
changes of opinion come with the years. Just criticisms 
in time are universally accepted. So the outward form 
is in flux. But no change affects the sway of a life 



THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 493 

which is genuine, and which communicates enduring 
spiritual help and inspiration. Men doubt theories; 
they believe facts. 

What did Jesus give the world to be a perpetual wit- 
ness that he once lived, and that he was worthy of the 
love and reverence with which men have remembered 
him ? Let us say, first, an ideal life. An ideal life so 
embedded in human consciousness that men cannot 
away with it. No matter now about the biographies ; 
no matter about the traditions; no matter what you 
believe or do not believe of these. As much as this is 
certain. In the earliest Christian years of which there 
is a sure record, a new and higher conception of holy 
living meets you. The true man, it says, is he who is 
one in heart and purpose with that infinite greatness 
we call the Heavenly Father. The true man is he who 
within is pure and just. The true man is he who in 
his secret soul loves his fellow man. In this concep- 
tion, all goodness is first inward, afterward outward ; 
first of the heart, then of the hand and the conduct. It 
is a fresh and lofty conception. It did not simply ex- 
press the spiritual standards of its own time. The 
Jewish thought of acceptable living was to pay tithes of 
mint, anise, and cummin, and to hold fast to the tradi- 
tions of the elders. It was hopelessly external. This 
conception could not have come from the Roman, — 
whose virtue even meant courage, endurance, whose 
very morality put on the Stoic garb, whose religion was 
prudent and earthly. It could not have come from the 
Greek, — in his best estate beauty -loving and pleasure- 
loving, and who in later days had sunk into doubt and 
voluptuousness. Neither could it have come from the 
earlier Christians themselves ; for neither they nor we 
have been able to reach up to that great pattern of 
divinest life. 



494 THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 

The conception of true life presented to the A^orld in 
the first Christian ages demands a great soul. It bears 
witness that a son of God taught and lived this imper- 
ishable moral ideal. There is no other adequate expla- 
nation. In all other departments of life this is the way 
we have to deal with the works which an unknown past 
hands down. I go out into the desert which skirts 
Palestine. I reach the oasis where Palmyra stood. 
Around me, beautiful even in ruins, are the remains of 
temple and palace. Do I need to be told that the rude 
Arab, who pitches his black tent and feeds his flock 
beneath their shadows, did not rear them ? Do not 
the works — these magnificent structures, that neither 
man's violence nor the waste of centuries have been able 
utterly to destroy — bear their own witness ? Though 
there were not preserved a line of history, should we 
not know that once a lordlier race here lived and 
wrought ? Even so the spiritual work rooted in man's 
life testifies of the worker. 

Consider the immortality which cleaves to the teach- 
ings of the New Testament. Here are those wonderful 
parables, which have delighted and instructed sixty gen- 
erations of the old and young. Read the parables of 
the Prodigal Son and of the Good Samaritan. How 
fresh and interesting they are ! How applicable to the 
errors, needs, and duties of man to-day ! No frost of 
age rests upon them. I doubt whether our own genera- 
tion, with all its progress in science, in art, and in litera- 
ture, can write one which will last half as long. Here 
is the Sermon on the Mount. It is a whole volume on 
ethics and religion, compressed into a dozen pages. Not 
a verse would we spare. How seriously yet how pithily 
it unfolds the whole philosophy and duty of true prayer ! 



THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 495 

What modesty it would add to the grace of charity ! 
With what clearness it states and illustrates the suprem- 
acy of the heavenly over the earthly treasure ! To the 
inwardness and depth of the better life in man, each 
Beatitude bears its own separate witness. No doubt a 
hundred thousand sermons have been written upon this 
first recorded sermon. A hundred thousand more may 
be. Yet the fountain will be unexhausted. And where 
shall we find profounder glimpses of man's divinest 
life than in the words of that Gospel of John, which 
Edmund Sears calls " the Heart of Christ " ? 

Some one says now, that we are not sure of the au- 
thorship of the four Gospels, that we do not know 
whether they were written thirty or seventy years after 
the supposed death of Jesus, that we cannot tell with 
certainty even whether their original garb was Hebrew 
or Greek. We are sorry if this be so. Naturally 
enough, we like to be sure even of unimportant details. 
But the great teacher is there. He who spake as God 
gave him wisdom has written his mark on every page. 
Had but one of the great Philippics of Demosthenes 
come down to us, and with no certain history attached, 
should we not know that in Greece's extremity there 
spake an orator at whose feet the lovers of eloquence 
might wisely sit ? We read the drama of " The Mer- 
chant of Venice." Very little written history tells of 
its author. Not a tenth part of what it records of some 
worthless sycophant. But how full the testimony of 
his works ! The knowledge of the human heart, of its 
springs of action, of its deep fountains of human joy 
and sorrow, are all written there in fair large characters. 
I read my Bible, and I know that Jesus walked with 
God ; that the volume of truth and duty was to him an 
open book ; that bis words were light and life ; that 



496 THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 

be must have spoken with authority, and not as the 
scribes. 

Reflect upon the vast impulse which Christianity has 
been in human history. Reflect not the less upon the 
blessing it has been in the private life of men, — quicken- 
ing their faith, comforting them in sorrow, and lead- 
ing uncounted multitudes out of the fleshly life up to 
the ways of the spirit. All this is of common observa- 
tion. For eighteen centuries this word, this life, has 
been a force in the personal experience, and a force in 
the great common life of humanity, — a stream of 
energy forever flowing, forever unexhausted. No one 
can look beneath the surface of human annals and not 
find it. 

Then we search for the beginning of this world wide 
inspiration, of this world inclusive movement. What do 
we find ? This. In a little despised province of Rome, 
probably in a despised town of this despised province, 
far away from the centres of power, a great word was 
spoken. The mighty of this world had but little respect 
for it. They withstood and hated it. Kings and rulers 
turned a deaf ear to it. Great ecclesiastical systems, 
strong in their organization, strong in traditional rev- 
erence, stood in its way. Even the light unbelief of the 
time, which was robbing so many of serious trust, did 
not furnish a congenial atmosphere in which to blossom 
arid bear fruit. But in three centuries the new truth — 
nominally at any rate — conquered the world. Men's 
ways of thinking, their rules of action, their best hopes 
for this world or the next, their dreams of a progress 
yet to be, their very laws, — all that makes up the 
basis and the texture of civilization, felt and feels its 
potent influence. 



THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 497 

We all know what may be said, and said truly. There 
had been a long and varied preparation, Roman conquest 
had melted into one countless and warring principalities, 
so that the whole world was open to the great-hearted 
missionary of the truth. The old faiths, the old rituals, 
were losing their power. Minds and hearts were grow- 
ing more hospitable to the fresh message which had in 
it rationality plus life. All this no doubt is true. But 
in this statement one thing is lacking, — a towering per- 
sonality, a soul charged with truth and sympathy, a 
mind and heart to be the media through which the 
divine life should flow into man's life. Even in mate- 
rial interests, great advances always demand great 
prophets. One does not believe that Bismarck united 
Germany as the watchmaker gathers into a perfect 
chronometer the scattered wheels and springs. But 
neither watch nor empire could dispense with the mas- 
ter hand. Much more do spiritual advances require 
prophets. Luther did not create the Reformation, but 
it would have lagged without him. John Wesley was 
not the whole of Methodism, but all the same it waited 
for his coming. So the world before Jesus's day had 
been all unconsciously preparing for a great fresh influx 
of spiritual life. But it waited for a mighty personality, 
a soul in whom God's spirit dwelt, — in whom was a 
knowledge of the truth, a love of man, and a bright 
vision of a nobler future. And it found all in the 
prophet of Galilee ; and his works, seen in a better 
civilization, and seen in a truer form of religion, and 
seen in purer lives, bear witness of him. Men believe 
in him and cherish his influence, not simply because of 
what is written, but because his own wonderful person- 
ality has poured itself without stint into the world's 
life. 



498 THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 

More and more I am disposed to exalt personality. 
The final law in all well ordered life is the principle of 
truth which expresses the love and wisdom of Him who 
created us. That of course. But never does a prin- 
ciple of truth come home with such power as when it is 
incarnated in living excellence. Take a simple illustra- 
tion. One praises in abstract terms heroic self-sacrifice. 
All he says is true. Yet perchance your heart does not 
burn within you, and you are not stirred to noble imita- 
tion. Replace now the abstraction by an actual example. 
Tell the story of one who has risked all, and lost all, to 
save another. The virtue takes on reality. The frost 
around the heart melts. The fountains of the great 
deeps of sympathy are broken up. You admire, you 
reverence, you imitate. 

In a large way, the remembrance of Jesus does the 
same thing, — changes mere assent into earnest accept- 
ance. That remembrance may have been connected 
with mistaken convictions. Nevertheless, the disposition 
of good and wise men to keep his memory green is an 
eminently healthy tendency. It proposes to bring men 
into contact with a personality which has in all the 
Christian years proved to be full of spiritual powers. 
One can hardly estimate the loss to the race, and to the 
individual, if in all the Christian centuries we could have 
excluded enthusiasm for Jesus's personality, and replaced 
it by a cool and sensible acceptance of truth, in which 
there was not one heart throb. 

"What we need is more heart throbs. To exclude from 
our lives tlie greatest example is to rob us of motive 
power. That wondrous life has filled the Christian ages 
with its work. It has flooded the Christian conscious- 
ness with its ideal of holy living. What most of us need 
is not more knowledge, but more warmth, more zeal, a 



THE POWER OF JESUS' LIFE. 499 

clearer conviction of the reality and worth of the better 
life. We get this warmth, we get this enthusiasm, we 
get this vision of a diviner life, to no little degree from 
the example of the saints, and especiall)' from that ex- 
ample which has led so many souls into higher paths 
and itself lighted the way. 



90 



